MONSTER PARADISE

1241-1260

Chapter 1241: Leaving the Ruin

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

After conquering the Ice Dragon, Lin Huang had basically fulfilled his preliminary goal of entering Qi Muxiong’s ruin.

For the next few days, apart from leaving Bai and the rest to dig for treasures on the frozen ocean, Lin Huang had been staying on the isolated island on the Eastern Ocean to digest Qi Muxiong’s memory.

Before entering the ruin, Qi Muxiong’s memory had a big hole while some of the recollections were even made up. However, since the Eternity Fire penetrated Lin Huang’s body, he finally obtained Qi Muxiong’s true memory that was close to perfection.

Throughout the past few days, he had been organizing the portions of the memories. He wanted to look for a way to exit the virtual zone, but his effort was to no avail.

Time passed by, and it was the last day of the seven-day ruin being opened.

“The time will be up in two hours. It’s time to leave,” Lin Huang looked at the time projected from his Emperor’s Heart Ring and mumbled to himself softly.

“We didn’t miss anything out, did we?” the Nightmare Tapir asked next to him.

“No. Looking at Qi Muxiong’s memory, we’ve basically obtained everything valuable in this ruin.” Overall, Lin Huang was satisfied with the reward of this trip.

As soon as he was done speaking, he had his eyes on the Crimson-Eyed Skeleton Dragon and the Ice Dragon that were not far away. “How do we bring the two of them with us?”

Lin Huang could integrate god rule relics and god items into his body but not living monsters unless they were pets that he had signed a contract with. They would then be put away in his pet space.

Moreover, the Crimson-Eyed Skeleton Dragon and the Ice Dragon were not Monster Cards that were formed after being killed, so they could not be put away in Lin Huang’s body.

“I can put them away in my God Territory for a short period of time. However, my God Territory will collapse if they’re in there for too long. After all, they’re True Gods. Even if they don’t activate the god rule, they will affect the God Territory’s internal rule. Unless it’s a true god-level God Territory, it can isolate the influence of the rule,” the Nightmare Tapir explained after hearing Lin Huang’s concern.

“I guess we can only leave them in the ruin for the time being.” Lin Huang thought about it and chose to leave the two monsters aside decisively. “We’ll bring the ruin with us and only release them when we arrive in the great world.”

The Ice Dragon and the Crimson-Eyed Skeleton Dragon had mixed feelings upon hearing that. On one hand, indeed, they hoped to leave the ruin that had become a prison to them. On the other hand, they would be controlled if they left with Lin Huang. It would be impossible for them to terrorize a place freely like they used to be.

After settling the Ice Dragon and the Crimson-Eyed Skeleton Dragon, Lin Huang put away the Nightmare Tapir, Bai and the rest of the Monster Cards before summoning a dimensional portal. He then returned to the entrance of the coordinates he had set earlier.

As soon as he stepped out of the dimensional portal, he lifted his head and saw a gigantic spider with long legs glaring at him with her 16 pitch-black eyes. There was doubt and confusion in her eyes.

It was the Spider Queen who had had a fling with the Thousand-Legged Centipede!

The Spider Queen was stunned to see a human appear in the ruin out of nowhere. She could not make sense of things at the moment. “A human?! Why is there a human in the ruin?”

On the other hand, Lin Huang reacted immediately. He summoned his imperial monster, Grimace, quickly. While he had considered the possibility of encountering monsters on the way here, never had he thought that he would encounter this Spider Queen.

Initially, his plan was to kill the monsters that he might encounter. However, after realizing that it was the Spider Queen, he decided not to kill her. After all, she had never showed any ill intentions since the beginning.

“Just erase her memory about seeing me,” Lin Huang ordered in his deep voice.

Hearing his instruction, Grimace turned around and lifted his head to look at the Spider Queen while raising his brow. “Isn’t this that little spider from before?”

Lin Huang had spared this spider’s life before and now he was asking Grimace not to kill her this time. Grimace looked at Lin Huang in confusion. However, he did not plan to go against his order.

Before the Spider Queen, who was not far away, could react, she saw a handsome man in black robes appear next to the human. The man in black robes snapped his fingers all of a sudden, sending a clear ringing sound that went into her head. In the next second, the Spider Queen’s giant body slumped onto the ground directly and she fell into a deep sleep.

“Let’s toss her out of the ruin.” Lin Huang looked at the ruin exit not far away and gave Grimace his second order.

With a pout, Grimace stretched the threads from his Divine Telekinesis to tie the Spider Queen up. He then tossed her hard like a basketball, thrusting her into the whirlpool at the exit of the ruin accurately.

The Spider Queen’s gigantic body was soon engulfed by the exit of the ruin and vanished.

Spreading his Divine Telekinesis, Lin Huang kept calm after realizing there was no other monster around though a few were approaching at a high speed. After putting Grimace away slowly, he crushed a Disguise Card again.

A moment later, he disappeared and was replaced by a gigantic Thousand-Legged Centipede.

As soon as the effect of the Disguise Card took place, an insect beast with three pairs of wings flew towards him at an alarming speed. However, after spotting Lin Huang, the beast merely glimpsed at him and entered the exit that was not far away.

Sensing that there were still two monsters approaching at lightning speed, Lin Huang did not rush out. Instead, he began chatting with the Eternity Fire. “From what I know, all monsters that come into this ruin will have their memories erased after they leave. Are you the one who does that?”

The Eternity Fire did not hide the truth. “That’s right. To prevent Qi Muxiong’s inheritance from being stolen, I set a rule in this ruin. Any living form will forget everything that has happened in the ruin once they leave this place. Any form of records will be erased too.

“Indeed, it prevented the ruin’s coordinates being exposed at first. A True God from the virtual zone found out about this ruin later on. Such a rule prevented that True God from stealing the ruin. Anyone he sent into the ruin failed to bring any information out of the ruin effectively.”

“So, will I be affected once I leave too?” Lin Huang asked immediately. Theoretically, the Rule Bending Power should be applicable to everyone and he might not be excluded.

However, the Eternity Fire denied his question, “Naturally, your memory won’t be erased. I was the one who set up this rule, so I’m immune to it. Since I’m hiding in your body, that means that you’re immune to the rule.”

Lin Huang was relieved to hear the answer.

At the moment, the two silhouettes that he sensed earlier came one after another. Both of them merely peeked at Lin Huang as they got into the exit of the ruin without stopping at all.

Seeing that, Lin Huang controlled the Thousand-Legged Centipede’s gigantic body to lumber out of the exit calmly.

Chapter 1242: Don’t You Dare Leave Me Behind Again!

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Lin Huang looked around as soon as he got out of the ruin.

Over 60 out of the 100 participants who had entered the ruin gathered around the entrance. Most of them were discussing something intensely with their cliques. Many participants had their eyes trained on him after he appeared.

Just when Lin Huang was puzzled, the Spider Queen stretched her long legs and appeared before him.

“You’re finally out, Wu Fei! Do you remember what happened in the ruin?”

Lin Huang lifted his head and saw the Dragon Sovereign who was not far away from the corner of his eye. Although the Dragon Sovereign had his eyes shut like he was sleeping, Lin Huang knew very well that he must be watching him and listening to what he was saying at the moment.

“Ruin?” Lin Huang pretended to be puzzled and turned his head to look at the entrance of the ruin behind him.

“Stop looking at it. The ruin will close in an hour. We’ve already gotten out of it,” the Spider Queen said directly.

“How come I don’t remember entering the ruin?” Lin Huang showed a confused expression and turned his head to look at the other monsters. He seemed to suspect that the Spider Queen was lying to him.

“Nobody remembers getting in and nobody recalls what happened, but you should check your storage space. You’ll realize that you did get in after checking,” the Spider Queen explained patiently. She had really forgotten about Lin Huang’s douchebag behavior of leaving her behind in the ruin, let alone remember the scene of Lin Huang stepping out of the dimensional portal. “I could only confirm that I really went in after seeing the various loot in my storage space.”

Lin Huang said nothing and pretended to check his storage space. He only lifted his head a long time later, looking shocked. “Have I really gotten in?!”

“See, I told you.” The Spider Queen groped Lin Huang’s front leg with one of her long legs as she spoke.

Lin Huang did not bother to struggle and allowed the Spider Queen to drag him aside. He was a little worried that the Dragon Sovereign would notice something off since he had gotten out. Fortunately, the Spider Queen chatting him up had concealed many of his possible flaws.

Moreover, another monster got out of the entrance of the ruin not long after the Spider Queen dragged him aside. Therefore, the Dragon Sovereign’s attention soon shifted to the monster which was a great relief to Lin Huang.

“Do we have to wait for everyone to get out?” Lin Huang asked the Spider Queen softly.

“Yes. The Dragon Sovereign Master said that he’ll send us out of here after the ruin is closed,” the Spider Queen confirmed with a nod.

Both of them chatted with the occasional silence.

Over an hour had passed, and no more monsters got out of the ruin when 87 of them were finally gathered. The opening window seemed to be finally up.

The survival rate was actually higher compared to before. The main reason was that Lin Huang had killed almost all the virtual god-level monsters in the entire ruin. Without local virtual god-level monsters around, the imperial-level participants undoubtedly encountered less threats. Naturally, as a result, the survival rate went up significantly.

Meanwhile, the Dragon Sovereign did not seem to care how many monsters survived the ruin. He flew to the entrance as soon as the time was up and pointed a claw into the air.

The iced shackles began flowing slowly like they were alive before the Dragon Sovereign did anything. The hexagonal entrance was shrinking at a speed that could be seen with the naked eye.

In less than half a minute, the entrance was sealed completely. The ruin recovered to its sealed condition completely, transforming into an ice planet.

The Dragon Sovereign only turned around after sealing Qi Muxiong’s ruin again. He looked at the 87 monsters expressionlessly with his cold, blue eyes. All of the monsters knelt onto the ground as a result of his True God’s suppression. They had no will to fight back at all.

Naturally, Lin Huang knelt down on purpose. Although a second-rank True God’s suppression would overpower him on a certain level, it was minor. As long as he activated his God’s Figurine or god rule relic in his body, he could defend the suppression like a piece of cake. However, he did not plan to reveal any flaws.

The Dragon Sovereign, Bai Bing, only spoke slowly after suppressing all the monsters present, “Who out of the 87 of you here remembers what happened in the ruin? Tell me even if you only remember the tiniest bit of it. I’ll reward you handsomely as long as someone can tell me what exactly happened in the ruin! Of course, if any of you were to lie for the reward, you should know very well what the consequences will be.”

The 87 monsters held their heads low as none of them spoke.

In reality, apart from Lin Huang, it was impossible for the other monsters to lie under the suppression. The powerful pressure and fear had stolen the possibility of them lying directly.

The Dragon Sovereign glanced through the 87 monsters after he spoke. Including Lin Huang, almost all the monsters felt like the seconds that passed by were years. Naturally, compared to other monsters, Lin Huang was afraid that he might show his flaws.

None of the monsters spoke after they fell into silence for over a minute.

The Dragon Sovereign sighed softly and recalled his suppression power then. He knew that they would definitely tell him whatever happened in the ruin if anyone remembered it under his suppression. Even if they attempted to hide, they would definitely show their flaws. However, none of the 87 participants looked suspicious this time. Clearly, nobody remembered anything just like before.

“Alright. I’ll send you guys back to the Dragon Sovereign Shelter and you guys can leave after that.” The Dragon Sovereign waved again after he spoke and released ten Dragnet Spiders.

The Dragnet Spiders spat spider threads out immediately as soon as they got the order. The threads tied the monsters up and dragged them into the black whirlpool that appeared out of thin air.

In the blink of an eye, Lin Huang and the rest passed through the whirlpool and returned to the Dragonkin Square at the Dragon Sovereign Shelter where they had been before.

Soon, all 87 monsters were sent to the square without anyone being left behind.

Lin Huang wanted to leave right away, but he decided to wait since all the monsters were waiting patiently at the square. However, they did not see the Dragon Sovereign after waiting for two to three minutes.

At the moment, a guard at the Dragon Sovereign Palace spoke all of a sudden, “The Dragon Sovereign says that you guys can leave now.”

Hearing the explicit permission, all the monsters at the square left one after another.

Lin Huang hovered into the air without hesitation when he saw the Spider Queen looking in his direction. He immediately zoomed far away.

The Spider Queen was stunned for a moment and hesitated. However, she soon made up her mind. Just like before, she went towards the direction Lin Huang left in aggressively.

“Wu Fei, don’t you dare leave me behind again!”

Chapter 1243: The Second Option

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Lin Huang’s clone stood up all of a sudden in the hotel where Bloody was at in Shelter No. 7.

Bloody had a slight change of expression. “Has Master’s main body returned?”

“Yes, I’ll head over to Shelter No. 11 to meet him to get his body back,” the clone responded lightly.

Shelter No. 11 was a large business shelter. There were three guardians, all of whom were on high-level virtual god-level. The most powerful one was an ape monster. Although its combat strength was only on virtual god-level rank-9, it had impressive abilities. It seemed to have a powerful background, whereby even the Three Sovereigns dared not offend it.

One of the reasons why they chose to meet there was because this place was basically the Three Sovereigns’ jurisdiction. Another reason was that there were all sorts of monsters coming in and out of this shelter daily.

Since coming out of Qi Muxiong’s ruin, Lin Huang’s main body headed straight to the Shelter No. 11 following Bloody’s arrangement earlier.

Regarding the Spider Queen who was following him, Lin Huang did not worry about getting rid of her. All he did was enter a floating island foothold close to the ruin and transform into a random monster that he saw on the street. He then left the foothold. He had no idea how the Spider Queen would react when she failed to find Lin Huang in the foothold.

After getting rid of the Spider Queen, Lin Huang arrived at Shelter No. 11 safe and sound. He waited for his clone patiently.

When it was approximately 2 p.m., the clone arrived at Shelter No. 11. It walked straight into the biggest trading market in the shelter whereas Lin Huang had been walking around for over half an hour.

Both of them signalled to each other when they met near a stall that they had agreed on earlier. The clone faded quickly in the midst of the crowd and the Surveillance Snail’s blind spot.

Lin Huang spent over two hours strolling in the trading market after changing back into Grimace’s form. He only left Shelter No. 11 after purchasing two toys.

It was almost 9 p.m. when he arrived at the hotel room.

In a red dress, Bloody was drinking tea on the couch in the living room when he returned. Upon seeing Lin Huang come in, Bloody put the tea cup in her hand down and finally revealed a smile on her face.

“Did everything go well?”

“Pretty much.” Lin Huang nodded.

Bloody nodded as well and did not ask further. “Let’s have supper at the food street.”

“Sure!” Lin Huang agreed right away. It had been a week since he last ate anything proper.

Both of them walked straight to a food street nearby as soon as they got out of the hotel.

Red lanterns were hanging on both sides of the street. Excluding the strange monsters walking all over the street and the stall owners that looked weird, the entire street was basically the same as a food street in the human world.

However, most of the food choices available were weird too. Nonetheless, there were more choices compared to the human world. Most of them were ingredients that Lin Huang could not recognize.

Bloody, on the other hand, did not let her time go to waste throughout the stroll. She introduced him to the food through voice transmission as they walked.

“You can try the drinks at stall No. 16 ahead. They have fruit juices, and the stall owner is a vegan enthusiast. Stall No. 43 further is a barbecue stall. They serve Swine Beast mostly. You’ll have to get their special menu if you’d like to try some other meat, but we can go for their normal set menu. Stall No. 67 sells seafood. They have many dishes that are common among humans”

They tasted the foods of the monster world as they strolled along the street. Although many of them were less tasty compared to the food cooked by human chefs, they had their very own style and some of the food were pretty delicious.

“Did everything go well on your side? Did the Butterfly Sovereign come again?” Lin Huang asked seemingly casually through voice transmission while eating barbecued meat.

“No, none of the Three Sovereigns came. Perhaps we seemed to be in a rush in the beginning, we might have calmed them down and they’re waiting for us to go to them instead,” Bloody nodded lightly.

“We avoided from having our identities exposed by doing that,” Lin Huang thought it was something good.

“How about you? Did you get anything from exploring the ruin?” Bloody asked.

“The reward is pretty great. We can take the whole ruin away when we leave but I haven’t found the way to the great world. Now we only have one last thing to solve in the virtual zone, how do we go to the great world?” Lin Huang turned his head to look at Bloody after swallowing the barbecued meat in his mouth.

Bloody only replied slowly through voice transmission after taking a sip of the pink juice calmly, “The first option is the one that I suggested before. Get the Butterfly Sovereign to send you to the great world while I stay back. Recall me back into card form when you arrive in the great world. That’s the easiest way.”

Bloody proceeded to speak before Lin Huang could reject the suggestion, “But the downside of this option is that although the Butterfly Sovereign promised to let us go after we work for her for a year, I’ll need to work way more than a year for her. Even if I promise to stay and she sends you away first, she might break her promise and send you somewhere else other than the great world. To prevent you from getting back to the great world, there’s a great possibility that she’ll banish you or even send you to a land of death where nobody can survive. To her, you naturally won’t come back for me as long as you’re dead. When the one-year period is up, all she’ll need to do is find some excuse to get me to stay. She might play with my emotions or suppress me with her power. No matter what, it’s very unlikely that she’ll let me go.”

“So, we can basically eliminate this option.” Lin Huang had figured the downside of the option much earlier.

“The second option is rather complicated to carry out. To put it simply, we will fulfil her wish,” Bloody said while smiling after taking another sip of the juice.

“Fulfil her wish?” Lin Huang was a little confused as he listened to this point.

“The reason why the Three Sovereigns want us is simple. All three of them are greedy, including the Butterfly Sovereign. Why don’t I stay to make her greed come true? As soon as her greed has grown so big that the entire virtual zone can no longer contain it, she’ll be aiming for the great world sooner or later. By then, she’ll bring me to the great world at her own will!”

“How would we have time for this?” Lin Huang was almost speechless to hear that.

“Naturally, it’ll take hundreds to even thousands of years if we really want to do it. But what if it’s just a dream?” Bloody had finished the juice in her hand completely. She tossed the cup into a trashcan by the street and lifted her head. She looked at Lin Huang with slyness shining in her eyes.

“Do you mean that we’ll get the Nightmare Tapir…?” Lin Huang came to a realization at the moment. He understood Bloody’s plan completely.

“I’ve already planned out the script of the entire dream. We can carry it out after getting the Nightmare Tapir to read it and prepare what we need.”

“Sure, let’s do it. I’ll pack Qi Muxiong’s ruin first thing tomorrow and we’ll meet the Butterfly Sovereign at 9 a.m.!”

Chapter 1244: 100 Years Passed By in The Dream

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

At 8.50 a.m., Lin Huang arrived at Qi Muxiong’s ruin as he stepped out of the dimensional portal. He contacted the Eternity Fire in his body while looking at the ruin that seemed like a frozen planet.

“Put the ruin away.”

Soon after Lin Huang spoke, tens of thousands of golden glows shot out of the sealed ruin. It looked as if the sun had been awakened.

As the golden flames shot out of the seal, the white icy crystal wall collapsed like an avalanche. There were also cracks that could be seen by the naked eye appearing on the thick icy chains. On top of that, the cracks were expanding at an astonishing speed. A few seconds later, the icy chains broke into hundreds of sections. They then disappeared into the air.

The entire thing lasted less than ten seconds. Just like that, the seal the Dragon Sovereign Bai Bing set collapsed completely.

As the seal collapsed, Qi Muxiong’s shiny ruin was as glaring as a burning sun. However, the sun only shone for less than a second. It shrunk to the size of a sesame seed and penetrated Lin Huang’s forehead through a stream of light.

In the next second, Lin Huang summoned the dimensional portal directly without any hesitation. He stepped in right away.

Within half a minute, Lin Huang disappeared. The original area where Qi Muxiong’s ruin had been experienced a dimensional turbulence. Slowly, a gigantic silhouette came out of the black dimensional whirlpool.

It was none other than one of the Three Sovereigns in the virtual zone, the Dragon Sovereign, Bai Bing!

His icy-blue pupils glanced at the original position of the ruin quickly. He was clearly stunned when he saw nothing there. Subsequently, he frowned and scanned the area with his Divine Telekinesis.

Naturally, his search was futile as Lin Huang had left through the dimensional portal. Not only had he returned to Division 7, but he had arrived at the Butterfly Sovereign Shelter with Bloody at that moment.

Having found nothing after the Divine Telekinesis search, Bai Bing was enraged. “How dare anyone touch my stuff!? No matter who you are, I swear I’ll dig you out of your grave!”

As soon as Lin Huang, who had disguised as Grimace, and Bloody arrived at the entrance of the Butterfly Sovereign Palace, a beautiful lady approached them.

The lady looked like she was only in her early 20s. She wore a long, purple dress. The most unique thing about her appearance was a pair of butterfly wings on her back that was purple as the base color. They were embellished with pastel colors and bright colors such as orange and red. They were a refreshing burst of colors to one’s sight.

Lin Huang and Bloody immediately recognized that this lady in purple butterfly wings was the Butterfly Sovereign’s personal God’s Servant.

“Master, the Butterfly Sovereign has acknowledged your arrival and got me to bring both of you in. Follow me.” The lady in purple nodded lightly and did not say anything unnecessary. She turned around and led both of them into the Butterfly Sovereign Palace right away.

Soon, under the guidance of the lady in purple, Lin Huang and Bloody passed through a tiny path and saw the Butterfly Sovereign who was in a white dress once again.

The Butterfly Sovereign looked like a 15 or 16 year old lady just like before. However, she was no longer dressed as casually as before. Her white dress reached the ground like a blooming lily. She had a bloody crown on her head that was adorned with divine patterns all over it. Lin Huang and Bloody could tell that it was a god rule relic. Also, she was no longer bare-footed. Instead, she had a pair of red heels on her feet. Compared to the plain air she carried the first time they met, the Butterfly Sovereign’s get-up matched what Lin Huang and Bloody were expecting to see before meeting her.

The Butterfly Sovereign sat on the throne that looked like a giant, white flower. She held her head down as she looked at them with a very subtle smirk on her lips.

“Have you guys decided?”

“We have.” Lin Huang, who was disguised as Grimace, nodded while smiling lightly.

“So, your final decision is…”

“We’ll stay and work for you for a year. When the contract reaches a year, we hope that you will do as you promised, Master Butterfly Sovereign, which is sending both of us to the great world,” Lin Huang shared his decision.

The Butterfly Sovereign could not help but raise her brows when she heard him. To be frank, Lin Huang’s decision was out of her expectations. Initially, she thought only one of them would stay. However, both of them were staying now.

“Aren’t you guys in a hurry? How come the both of you are staying now? Don’t you need me to send one of you away to handle your matter?” The Butterfly Sovereign could not help but fire the few questions at once.

“We’ve discussed it in detail in the past week and we’ve come to a decision that we’ll both stay. We actually lied about only being able to stay for a week at the most so that we could leave the virtual zone as soon as possible. In reality, we can stay much longer than a week in the virtual zone,” Lin Huang explained.

All the Butterfly Sovereign’s suspicion dissolved. “Alright, we’ll sign a contract then. From today onwards, both of you will be under me for a year. You’ll follow my orders. A year later, when the contract expires, I promise to send you away!”

“Sure!”

…

Lin Huang was finally relieved when he saw the contract signing go smoothly in the dreamland. “The contract has finally been signed!”

“Yeah, we’re pretty fortunate that we succeeded on the first try. I was worried that she might spot something off and struggle out of the dreamland!” Bloody could not help but exclaim.

The Nightmare Tapir, who was next to them, could not help but add, “You guys don’t actually have to worry. She only has a combat strength of first-rank True God. The intensity of her spirit is common among True Gods, so it’s still within my range of control. Even if I fail the first time, I can still do it again by resetting the dreamland. Although the possibility of her finding out about the strange occurrence will increase every time I reset the dreamland, judging by the intensity of her spirit, it shouldn’t be a problem to do it within three attempts. There’ll only be a small possibility of her noticing it if I were to do it more than five times.”

Although the Nightmare Tapir only had a combat strength of Virtual God rank-9, his rank was higher than the Butterfly Sovereign’s. Apart from that, since the Butterfly Sovereign’s spirit intensity was mediocre, she was dragged into Nightmare Tapir’s dreamland without noticing. That was how Lin Huang and Bloody witnessed whatever happened earlier.

A year had passed in the dreamland in the blink of an eye.

With Lin Huang’s disguise and Bloody’s assistance, the Butterfly Sovereign developed much more than the Dragon Sovereign and the Lion Sovereign. Her growth could be described as prosperous.

Although the Butterfly Sovereign was still the weakest among the Three Sovereigns, the gap between her and the other two sovereigns had undoubtedly shrunk significantly. With the two capable warriors, the Butterfly Sovereign almost went all out and finally convinced the duo to stay.

Years had passed in the dreamland.

With Lin Huang and Bloody’s help, the Butterfly Sovereign’s organization only spent 12 years catching up with the Lion Sovereign. She even surpassed the Dragon Sovereign in the 18th year, becoming the number one organization in the entire virtual zone.

In the 78th year, the Butterfly Sovereign finally elevated to a second-rank True God.

In the 99th year, she successfully took over the Lion Sovereign’s organization. Later on, she spent two years taking over the Dragon Sovereign’s organization. She was the overlord of the virtual zone by then.

In the 102nd year, the Butterfly Sovereign finally agreed to let her capable warriors, Lin Huang and Bloody, leave to the great world under their persuasion.

In reality, it had only been less than ten minutes in the real world.

The moment when the Butterfly Sovereign was going to activate the dimensional gateway, the Nightmare Tapir projected what the Butterfly Sovereign was doing in the dreamland into the real world, putting her into a mode as if she were sleep-walking.

As the Butterfly Sovereign activated the dimensional portal in the dreamland, she also activated the same gateway in the real world.

Lin Huang and Bloody looked at each other and smiled when they saw the dimensional portal forming. The duo brought the Nightmare Tapir into the gateway.

Chapter 1245: Shelter No.1245

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

“We’re finally out!”

A black whirlpool consolidated midair in a wilderness from nowhere, before a man and a woman stepped out of it.

The young man in a black trench coat could not help but smirk as he lifted his head to look far ahead, bracing the strong wind that swept up the dust that covered the wilderness sky with weed.

“If I’m not mistaken, we should be somewhere close to the grade-1 Shelter No.1245.”

“According to Butterfly Sovereign’s plan in the dreamland, the destination we’ve been teleported to should be close to Shelter No.1245. However, we still can’t confirm our current coordinates before seeing Shelter No.1245.” The lady in red next to him hovered midair as she turned her head and looked at the young man.

Naturally, the two people who appeared out of thin air were Lin Huang and Bloody that the Butterfly Sovereign had just teleported to the great world by means of the Space God Rule.

The Butterfly Sovereign had set the coordinates close to Shelter No.1245 when she was in the great world back then. Due to Lin Huang and Bloody’s persuasion, the Butterfly Sovereign who ruled the entire virtual zone was intending to return to the great world growing in her. The Butterfly Sovereign would occupy Shelter No.1245 as her first plan before stealthily expanding and developing her influence.

Shelter No.1245 was just an inconspicuous grade-1 Shelter, and the most powerful guardian was only a demigod. If there were not millions of them, there were at least hundreds of thousands of such shelters throughout Protoss territory. No powerhouses would give attention to such a place at all.

With the Butterly Sovereign’s capability, it would not take her long to elevate this shelter to a grade-3 shelter once she took over. Eventually, she would make it into a significant organization. Later, she would apply to be a grade-5 shelter’s affiliate and with a grade-5 shelter’s protection, the organization would have their feet planted in the great world. She would develop it further later on and attempt to breakthrough to the heavenly god-level, and as soon as she broke through, the shelter’s grade would be elevated to grade-5. By then, she would also consider an overlord in the great world.

That was the plan Bloody came up with for the Butterfly Sovereign in the dreamland.

Even if the Butterfly Sovereign had no interest in the beginning, her greed grew significantly after ruling the virtual zone in Bloody’s dreamland.

No matter how big the virtual zone was, it could no longer contain her greed.

The black whirlpool behind Lin Huang and Bloody began to fade and disappeared gradually as the duo chatted.

Lin Huang peeped at the gateway’s exit that was disappearing. He raised his brows slightly. “I thought she’d come after us. That lady is much calmer than I imagined.”

However, it seemed to be in Bloody’s expectation, “No matter what, she’s the overlord of the virtual zone. If she can’t even handle such a situation, she can’t be the Butterfly Sovereign of the virtual zone.”

“If it was me, I might even bomb Butterfly Sovereign Palace if I found out I was tricked in the dreamland and was being used to activate the gateway toward the great world.” Lin Huang chuckled softly.

“She must be secretly crushed but she knew very well that she’s no match for Nightmare Tapir. She’d most probably die if she came after us. After all, she fell into the trap earlier without even noticing. There’s a high possibility that she’d fall into the trap for the second and third time. No matter how upset she is, she can only tolerate in silence.” What Bloody said seemed to reflect the Butterfly Sovereign’s current mood.

…

At the Butterfly Sovereign Palace in the virtual zone, Butterfly Sovereign Cai Yi clenched her fists tightly while watching the dimensional gateway fade slowly in rage.

There were a few times when she attempted to rush in. However, she decided to be rational and finally gave up on that thought.

“Grimace! Bloody! I’ll remember both of you! I’ll definitely kill the both of you in the future!”

Although she said that while clenching her teeth, Cai Yi had little faith in succeeding in that endeavor.

Until this moment, she was still unsure of when she fell into the trap and got dragged to the dreamland. That aside, she also knew full well that she stood little to no chance of a victory should she see the duo again despite them both only having the combat strength of people at the virtual god-level.

She began recalling everything that happened in the dreamland over ten minutes as she calmed herself down. All of a sudden, a strange expression could be seen on Cai Yi’s face.

“Although it was just a dream, the development strategies, and combat skills that girl Bloody provided seem to really work… What if I carry them out in reality…”

Cai Yi’s eyes lit up, she seemed to have completely forgotten that she was tricked…

…

However, Lin Huang and Bloody who was, at this moment, far away in the great world knew nothing about that.

The duo rushed along their path and soon arrived at the protoss shelter that was closest to their sensing range.

Lin Huang and Bloody attracted the shelter guards’ attention just as they were descending from midair. There was fear in their eyes.

“Are both you masters entering the city?” the monster guard with crocodile head asked carefully.

A protoss would have three forms and would usually appear in their mortal form, which was a human form. The reason was that their original form was usually gigantic, making it inconvenient for them to move around. Meanwhile, their immortal form would drain their energy at all times since energy was the main source of retaining that form.

Clearly, the complete human forms had proved that the duo were legitimate members of the Protoss. The grade suppression from Bloody and Lin Huang disguising into Grimace alone was enough to make the guards tremble just from standing there. It was the kind of suppression that a human could not fake.

“What’s the code of this shelter?” Lin Huang asked coldly. He even only peeped at the two guards coldly.

Since he disguised into a Protoss, he should naturally portray a Protoss’ arrogance as well. Courtesy was unnecessary when asking questions.

“Master, this is Shelter No.1245.” The two guards did not find Lin Huang’s question odd. The reason was that most of the shelters below grade-3 only had codes but not names. Hardly any members of the Protoss would visit shelters below grade-3, so it made sense that they did not know of the shelter’s code.

Lin Huang and Bloody turned their heads and looked at each other after hearing the guard informing the code. The duo was finally relieved, as the Butterfly Sovereign sent them to the correct coordinates.

“Let’s take a look at the shelter,” Bloody signaled to Lin Huang.

This was the first shelter that the duo discovered in the great world. Naturally, the first thing to do was to collect some basic information.

“Masters, do you want to see the master guardian?” the crocodile-head guard asked softly.

“I hope that isn’t too much… I mean, lead the way,” Lin Huang was about to say ‘I hope that isn’t too much’ by habit. However, recalling that he was a snobbish Protoss, he scrapped that immediately.

Clearly, Bloody who was next to him heard. She could not help but smirk, she almost laughed out loud.

Soon, the duo arrived at the guardian residence under the crocodile-head’s guidance.

The Shelter’s guardian was a dog-headed person with blonde hair. Although he only had combat strength of imperial-level while he was approximately two meters tall, Lin Huang was tempted to pat its head since his golden hair was shining like a purebred Golden Retriever under the sun.

Chapter 1246: Could There be Precious Treasures Nearby?!

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

It was not Lin Huang’s first time seeing a dog-headed person. In reality, he had seen such a monster in the wild zones more than once during his first year of travel to the gravel world.

However, the dog-headed person that Lin Huang saw back then looked like a strange, mixed breed. They were ugly with messy hair and looked many times filthier than most strays on earth. Most importantly, their intelligence was lower than most dogs on earth. All they could do was bite and eat.

It was Lin Huang’s first time seeing a dog-headed person that was of pure Golden Retriever breed at that moment. This made him think back to the Golden Retriever he had as a child back home before traveling to the gravel world.

The dog-headed person did not mind Lin Huang being out of the zone at all. He greeted them passionately.

“Let me know if there’s anything that both of you masters need. I’ll definitely help if I can.”

Bloody took over the conversation after noticing that Lin Huang was distracted.

“If that’s the case, we won’t hold back. We need maps of the nearby areas along with access to this Shelter’s archive. The more versions we have of the map, the better. Also, the higher the access level granted to us for the archive, the better.”

A surprised expression flashed through the dog-headed person’s eyes when he heard Bloody’s requests. However, he agreed directly without much hesitation.

“Sure, I’ll arrange accommodation for both of you first. After that, I’ll bring both of you to the archive, sort out the maps and send them over to you.”

“There’s no need for accommodation, it won’t take long for us to read the documents. Just send the maps to the archive directly.”

The Divine Telekinesis Virtual Gods possessed the ability to retrieve various information at a blinding speed. With Bloody’s Supreme Intelligence, her speed of retrieving information was hundreds of times faster than ordinary virtual god-level powerhouses, and probably only required less than half an hour to read all the archives in a grade-1 shelter. Naturally, this made it unnecessary for them to stay in this shelter.

“Alright then, I’ll lead both of you to the archive now.” The dog-headed person nodded immediately.

The archive was located at the back courtyard of the guardian residence. The dog-headed person led Lin Huang and Bloody through a graveyard with various creatures’ carcasses buried and stopped when they arrived at a small house.

Lin Huang could not help but frown slightly as they were walking here.

He knew about dog-headed people’s bad habit of burying carcasses a few years back. He never thought that the spotless golden retriever he saw before him had the same bad habit as the mixed breed dog-headed people.

The dog-headed person seemed to be embarrassed by himself as he kept his gaze low while they walked through the backyard, walking faster than before. He only spoke again when they arrived at the little house in the backyard.

“This little house isn’t the real archive. There’s a red worm guarding it in there, and only people that I bring in won’t be attacked. The real archive is underground. To be exact, in the maze built by the red worm, only the red worm and I knew the correct route.”

Although Lin Huang had never seen a red worm, he was not a stranger to it. He remembered a monster with that name when he saw it in the monster guide for the first time because it looked like an earthworm that had been enlarged countless times. Apart from the difference in size, the red worm had sharp teeth that looked like spikes all over its mouth and a long tongue that could be shot out rapidly.

It could burrow underground like an earthworm and enjoyed setting up mazes in its territory. The red worm mainly eats rotten flesh and would also attack creatures that trespasses into its territory.

However, to Lin Huang and Bloody, the red worm’s maze was nothing to them no matter how difficult it was. They could see everything in the maze clearly by just scanning it with Divine Telekinesis.

The dog-headed person could only defend against imperial-level enemies at most. After all, the red worm that was hiding under the little house only had combat strength of an imperial-level. It would be killed immediately as soon as it encountered a virtual god-level powerhouse.

“Hong Hong, I brought some people here.” The dog-headed person took a step forward and knocked on the little house’s metal door three times.

A humming sound soon came from the house in response to the knock.

Then, the dog-headed person turned his head around to nod at Lin Huang and Bloody. “You may now enter, masters. Please follow behind me, and try not to make a sound.”

The dog-headed person extended his hand and opened the metal door as soon as he was done speaking before entering hastily.

Lin Huang and Bloody followed him immediately.

As Lin Huang expected, the inside of the house was small — only less than 30 square meters. However, there was a big, four-meter diameter hole in the middle of the house that had a gigantic monster extending its head from the hole.

The dog-headed person took out a rotten beast carcass from his storage space and tossed it at the monster. It opened its mouth, caught the carcass, and began eating it happily.

Lin Huang took this opportunity to observe the monster.

According to the monster guide, the highest combat strength ever recorded for a red worm found in the gravel world was only at the holy fire-level. There were no immortal-level red worms ever found.

However, the one before him had a solid imperial-level purple gold-rank combat strength despite its size that did not look much different from what the monster guide described. It was just an earthworm that was enlarged countless times with a mouth full of sharp teeth. The only thing that was different from the description in the monster guide was there were many faint, tiny purple spots on its wrinkled, red skin.

In less than ten seconds, the red worm ate and swallowed the beast carcass that weighed hundreds of pounds. There was not a single bone or anything left over.

The dog-headed person only spoke again when the red worm was done eating.

“Please send these two masters to the archive. There are errands that I need to run. I’ll come back later. Send them off for me if these two masters need to leave before I return.”

The red worm released a hum like it was responding to the dog-headed person.

The dog-headed person then said to Lin Huang and Bloody in relief, “Please ride on its back, masters. It’ll bring you to the archive. I’ll go on to sort out the map. I’ll return later.”

“Sure!” Lin Huang swallowed the ‘thanks’ that almost slipped out of his lips.

Both of them rode on the red worm’s back, it then turned around to the ground and crawled towards the destination quickly.

After seeing both of them off, the dog-headed person only looked away a while later. He seemed like he was in deep thought.

“The two Protoss came out of nowhere, they requested to look at our archive and maps… Judging by the duo’s responses, there must be precious treasures close to the shelter!”

“But I’ve looked through all of the areas that are open around the shelter throughout the decades here. I didn’t find anything valuable, let alone items that are attractive to two Protoss… There should be something that’s happening if it’s something that only appeared during recent decades. Still… I don’t recall anything happening during the past decades.

The dog-headed person shook his head feeling helpless after failing to come up with anything. He left the little house with a head full of doubts.

Chapter 1247: Giving Your Dog Head A Pat!

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The reason Lin Huang and Bloody wanted to read everything at the archive and attain the maps were actually very simple. All they wanted was to learn more about the great world.

After all, it had been over 300 years since the Butterfly Sovereign was last in the great world. The world that she remembered must be different from how it was now.

After more than 300 years, the shelter that the Butterfly Sovereign remembered may no longer be there, let alone the accuracy of the coordinates.

Moreover, it was not only the Butterfly Sovereign, but most of the convicts that Lin Huang met in the Royal Trial were also imprisoned for up to a hundred years or more. Their impression of the great world too were from hundreds of years or even up to a thousand years ago.

Lin Huang and Bloody rode on the red worm’s back and waited for it to crawl for some ten minutes patiently. Finally, the duo arrived at the cave where the archive was.

The red worm turned around and left after dropping them at the cave entrance.

Lin Huang and Bloody chuckled out of surprise as they stepped into the cave and saw what was inside.

The cave was pretty big. However, the so-called archive was just merely a couple of crude shelves.

The shelves were built out of some animal skeletons, were over three meters tall and approximately two meters wide. However, in the huge ‘archive’, there were less than eight such bookshelves. Not only that, only two-third of them had documents while a third of them were empty.

Lin Huang walked closer and realized that they were beast skins of assorted colors and thickness.

He also noticed the texts used to record the documents on the beast skins. He was familiar with them.

“Fortunately, the documents were recorded in divine words. Otherwise, we would need to spend some time to familiarize with them.” As Lin Huang was observing the beast skins on the shelves, Bloody had scanned through dozens of beast skins with her Divine Telekinesis and confirmed the recorded texts.

The so-called divine words were the official universal text used among the Protoss organizations.

The reason why Bloody said that was because apart from divine word, the more significant tribes in the great world would have their own languages and scripts.

Bloody spent less than three minutes reading everything recorded on the beast skins in the archive. It was much faster than what she expected before coming here.

“There’s not much useful information in this archive. Fortunately, the news documents throughout the recent decade are well maintained. They basically have everything major that happened in the God Territory for the past ten years.”

“They have so many news documents in store?” Lin Huang was a little surprised.

The so-called news documents were the newspapers and magazines on earth.

However, what differentiated the Protoss’ news documents was that there were up to a thousand pieces of news media available. There was all sorts of news around daily.

There was only one clan who owned the right to publish news in the God Territory – the Nius Clan of the Protoss. Not only that, under normal circumstances, they would only publish one edition per month.

Although most people in the God Territory were using the communication devices invented by humans, the news subscription from the Nius Clan was growing.

The reason was that there was only one edition per month. Moreover, it was usually a cover with a piece of beast skin. Therefore, the news that were published was basically major news. Given that the Nius Clan brilliantly added the entertainment section and electronic version of their news realizing the information impact on the internet, their sales were growing instead of dropping.

Initially, people read the news documents for information. Nowadays, reading news documents was more like entertainment to pass time.

The news documents stored in the shelter’s archive were totally a request from the Protoss.

To guarantee their sales, the Nius Clan had signed an agreement earlier with the Protoss’ upper echelons that required shelters within the God Territory to subscribe to their news each month. Not only that, they would have to keep the news for at least a decade untouched.

That was the reason why the shelter where the dog-headed person lived had so many news documents in store.

Naturally, Lin Huang and Bloody had no idea of the secret. They thought the blonde dog-headed person had the habit of collecting news documents.

“Judging by the news documents, the internal conflicts between the Protoss have been getting worse throughout the years. This matches the Butterfly Sovereign’s memory in the dreamland,” Bloody said while sorting the content that she put together and shared them to Lin Huang.

Lin Huang only managed to digest the information after a good ten minutes before he spoke again with a smile.

“It makes sense that there are internal conflicts between the Protoss. After all, they’re the top tribe in the great world where they’ve been living in peace for over 5,000 years. As soon as a person gets comfortable, they’d naturally have more desires, let alone those clans and organizations among the Protoss that are already greedy. They’d always want more of what they already have.”

The duo chatted about the God Territory for a while before the blonde dog-headed person returned riding on the red worm.

Seeing Lin Huang and Bloody, he took out two beasts skins from his space storage immediately.

“This is the map of our planet, the latest version that was released 13 years ago. The Shelters and the danger zones’ coordinates are marked clearly,” the dog-headed person spread open the two beast skins one after another and explained while pointing at them. “This is the detailed map of the areas close to our shelter. It included the seven shelters around, with clear pictures of the mountain terrains.”

“Do you have the star map?” Lin Huang asked.

“I only have one simplified version of the star map with me,” the dog-headed person replied as he spread another beast skin open.

The information on the piece of beast skin was much simpler than the previous two maps.

“Only the Dust Shelter has a detailed version of the star map.”

Lin Huang and Bloody read a little bit about the Dust Shelter at the archive. The Dust Shelter was a grade-3 Shelter that dominated this planet. There was a branch on this planet with a Virtual God rank-8 guardian at the moment.

Meanwhile, the Dust Shelter’s headquarters was on another planet close by. The guardian was only a second-rank True God. There was only one True God in the entire Shelter, whereby there were only three planets under their territory including the headquarters. It was considered the weakest grade-3 shelter among the rest.

Lin Huang could not help but frown as he recalled everything he knew about the Dust Shelter. The Butterfly Sovereign must have her own intentions for choosing to send them here.

“Give me this star map as well.” Lin Huang took over the three maps from the dog-headed person’s hand and put them away into his storage ring. He then patted the dog-headed person’s arm, “Thanks for your hard work.”

“It’s my responsibility to provide such services to both of you, masters.” The dog-headed person held his head down a little fearfully.

Lin Huang turned his head to look at Bloody, “There’s no need for us to stay, am I right? Should we head straight to the Dust Shelter?”

“Sure,” Bloody nodded.

“Thanks for your service.” Lin Huang could not help extending his gratitude again before he left.

The dog-headed person held his head down again with a little more fear now.

All of a sudden, he felt a hand pressing on his head. The dog-headed person was dumbstruck at the moment.

“It’s a little tangled, you should wash your hair,” Lin Huang patted his head twice and commented.

He used to have a golden retriever at home when he was younger and was eager to pat the dog-headed person’s head as soon as he saw him. He finally got to pat his head now.

Before the dog-headed person managed to respond, Lin Huang pressed onto Bloody’s shoulder and they took their leave from the underground in a flash.

The duo who returned to the ground did not stay there at all. Instead, they headed directly toward where the Dust Shelter’s branch was.

The dog-headed person who looked shocked was the only person left behind at the archive. “What just happened?!”

Chapter 1248: Dust Shelter

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The Dust Shelter’s branch was over 20,000 kilometers away from the Shelter where the dog-headed person was.

Moving at a hundred times faster than the speed of light compared to usual Virtual God powerhouses, Lin Huang and Bloody merely spent ten minutes to travel close to half of the earth’s perimeter before they arrived at their destination.

The guardian at the entrance of the shelter was respectful as usual as they were invited into the city.

Although this particular shelter was only a branch, it was much more crowded than the shelter where the dog-headed person was at.

However, Lin Huang and Bloody stood out in the crowd as they appeared in human form. Many of those who were there were checking them out secretly.

The duo did not stay at all. Instead, they headed straight to the guardian residence.

As soon as they arrived at the guardian residence, a person in the form of a fish welcomed them with a group of people.

“It is the pleasure of the Dust Shelter to welcome both of you masters.”

Clearly, the fish-person was the guardian of this branch.

Lin Huang and Bloody sensed the aura on him, his combat strength was indeed the rumored Virtual God rank-8.

Although Lin Huang had read about the fish-person on the monster guide, it was his first time seeing a real one so he began observing him a little.

The fish-person looked like a human with a muscular body that was over two meters tall. He had a sea blue beard all over his face and looked like some 40-year-old middle-aged man.

If one must differentiate him from a human, he had a few tears that looked like shark gills on both sides of his chin to his neck. They were covered partially by his thick beard so only a few fears were faintly visible.

After the person chatted with Bloody for a little bit, Lin Huang was done with his observation.

“We just happened to pass by this planet. We need to borrow your shelter’s dimensional portal.”

“Sure, I’ll bring both masters over.” The fish-person agreed to that without hesitation.

In the God Territory, Protoss members held a high position. Apart from powerhouses on the true god-level, most of the tribes only held affiliate positions. The same applied to the Virtual God rank-8 fish-person.

Although Lin Huang, who disguised himself as Grimace and Bloody were not of pure God’s Blood, they were in their complete human form. Given their quadruple-mutated mythical-level aura, these two factors alone were sufficient for people to believe they were Protoss. Even the Virtual God rank-8 fish-person guardian before them suspected nothing about their identity at all.

Although Lin Huang and Bloody only had combat strength of Virtual God rank-2, the fish-person guardian dared not slow down at all. He led the duo to the dimensional portal directly.

Lin Huang and Bloody took this kindness at face value and stepped right into the dimensional portal, disappearing from where they were.

When they walked out of the dimensional portal, both of them had arrived at another planet

“Even the energy density in the air of this planet is much denser than the previous one.”

Lin Huang sensed the significant difference between the two planets as soon as he stepped out of the dimensional portal.

“It makes sense. A grade-3 shelter’s headquarters that was picked out by a true god-level powerhouse would have more minerals and resources of all sorts. It’s only natural that the energy density is higher.” Bloody nodded lightly.

As they were chatting through a voice transmission, they got a clearer picture of the environment around them.

There were two guardians next to the dimensional portal with imperial-level combat strength. Both of them were aquatic monsters, with aquatic monster heads.

“Welcome, masters!” the two monsters bowed and spoke at the same time as soon as they saw Lin Huang and Bloody.

Lin Huang and Bloody nodded lightly and hovered into the air before heading to where the shelter was.

The duo headed straight to the guardian residence as soon as they entered the shelter.

Shelters of grade-3 and above would have at least a true god-level powerhouse (except branches) guardian. Even in a God Territory, the guardian’s position was no different than a member of the Protoss. As a courtesy, it was necessary for both Protoss juniors to visit the guardian since they came to the grade-3 shelter.

Lin Huang and Bloody knew that so they decided to visit the Dust Shelter’s guardian as soon as they got here.

A merman welcomed them just when they arrived at the guardian residence.

What differentiated them from fish-person was all mermen and mermaids had fishtail, including this one before them. Not only that, they had handsome faces with blonde hair. They would be the top boy toys if they were on earth.

Lin Huang saw mermaids at the Peaceful Ocean in the gravel world before. He knew that this tribe was beautiful no matter male or female, so he did not find that odd.

However, this merman before them was not the shelter’s guardian. Lin Huang and Bloody could tell that by just looking at him. The reason being he only had combat strength of Virtual God rank-7, which was too far away from true god-level.

The merman observed them quietly from far away. He only welcomed them with a smile when they arrived at the entrance.

“The governor has been waiting, please follow me, masters.”

Clearly, this merman was just a butler of some sort.

Lin Huang and Bloody nodded while smiling, they then followed him.

They did not find it strange that the guardian knew that they were coming. The guardian was at the true god-level after all, his sensing range of the God Territory should be wide enough to cover the entire planet. Their quadruple mutated aura and human form should attract the guardian’s attention right away.

After all, it was rare to have Protoss members to visit a grade-3 guardian residence.

This grade-3 shelter was much bigger than the previous grade-1 guardian residence.

The merman led Lin Huang and Bloody through the courtyard for five to six minutes and finally arrived at a palace.

The palace was mainly blue and gold in color, with a faint, white mist lingering around.

The merman pressed his palm on the palace door that was tightly shut, causing a faint blue wave to spread on the door before it opened slowly.

‘This palace is a god rule relic?! This is really a great world, whereby some grade-3 shelter’s guardian would have an expensive collection of his own. I would love a palace god rule relic too!’

Naturally, it was impossible for Lin Huang to say that out loud. He was only thinking that to himself secretly.

He could not help but look at Bloody who was next to him, he wanted to see her reaction. However, she seemed very calm. Noticing his glare, she turned her head to lock eyes with him. She subsequently smiled, clearly guessing what Lin Huang had in mind at the moment.

As the palace door opened completely, the mermaid only stepped foot into the palace hall before leading the duo in.

The three of them passed by a few rooms, and the mermaid only stopped walking when they arrived before a blue and silver metal door. He pressed his palm on it and pushed it open.

“Please wait in this lounge, the master governor will be here later.”

“There’s no need, the master governor can go ahead with his errands first,” Bloody responded while smiling.

This lounge was similar to a human lounge with a similar setting. Clearly, the God Territory had significant influence from humans. The only difference was that the room was over five meters tall. Moreover, there was a gilt chair that was two to three times bigger than a normal chair placed in the middle.

As Lin Huang and Bloody were looking around, the mermaid began pouring them tea at ease.

Just when the tea was served and the duo took a sip, the lounge door was opened. A thick voice came.

“It’s Dust Shelter’s pleasure to welcome both distinguished guests! Hahahaha…”

Chapter 1249: The Best Solution

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

As the deep voice boomed, a majestic silhouette stepped into the lounge after the door was opened.

Even Lin Huang and Bloody could not help but lift their heads because the person who came was at least 3.5 meters tall. It was a giant indeed.

When looked closely, one would notice that he only looked 90% like a human. There was something that differentiated him from a human. There were four almost invisible tiny holes on each side of his neck under his chin.

However, the detail alone made Lin Huang and Bloody realize who the person was. The human form, the gigantic body, and the breathing holes on his neck were clear descriptions of those in the monster guide. The person was definitely a member of the Whale-man Tribe under the Fish-man Tribe.

“I’m Dust Shelter’s guardian, Whale13. Welcome both distinguished guests here!”

“I’m Grimace. This person next to me is Bloody,” Lin Huang shared the identity of his current disguise, “Both of us passed by this wonderful place by accident. We thought we have to pay you a visit since there’s a Fish-man Tribe senior guarding the Shelter.”

Although he was disguised as a Protoss member, the person was a True God after all. He deserved to be called a senior.

Whale13, on the other hand, was over the moon when he heard what Lin Huang said. It was not that he had never met a Protoss before, but those that he met were arrogant. Even those juniors who were not even on virtual god-level were rude when they met him, a True God. However, these two juniors who were not even on virtual god-level before him kept calling him a senior, so he was pleased to be speaking with them.

‘How wonderful would it be if all Protoss juniors are as courteous as them,’ Whale13 could not help but think to himself.

“Haha, this Shelter is quite a crude and remote one. Apart from my few best friends and tribe people, there are usually very few guests on normal days, let alone Protosses like both of you. It’s destiny that brought you here today. Give me a minute. Let me get people to arrange a banquet to welcome both of you.”

Whale13 treated the duo passionately. The level of his friendliness made Lin Huang and Bloody suspect that he might have some ill intentions.

Fortunately, nothing unpleasant happened.

The three of them chatted while drinking tea. Soon, a fish-man came to inform them that the banquet was ready. Whale13 then dragged Lin Huang and Bloody to the table.

On the dining table, Whale13, who was tipsy from the drinks, finally revealed how Lin Huang and Bloody were different from other Protoss. At the same time, he criticized what he was unsatisfied with.

Lin Huang and Bloody were not sure whether to laugh or cry when they learned why Whale13 was so friendly to them.

After they were done with the brunch and made sure that Whale13 was treating them out of genuine kindness, Lin Huang asked for the star map and the request to access the archive calmly.

“I can provide the star map for you guys for free, but there’s no way that I can give you full access to the archives. Grade-3 Shelters are guarded by Protoss, and there are some documents that only the guardians can access since they’re confidential to the outside world. There’s no exception for Protosses like the both of you,” Whale13 spoke in all honesty.

“Then, give us the access that’s opened to us,” Lin Huang nodded while smiling.

“Don’t mind me asking this. My Dust Shelter is remote, and you should be able to find most documents available at Shelters above grade-3 in the Protoss archive. What are you guys looking for to be coming to our archive intentionally?” Whale13 could not help but raise a question.

In the God Territory, ever since humans helped build the Internet and archives, all sorts of documents and information in grade-3 and above Shelters were stored in a copy in the Protoss’s great archive that was similar to a cloud system. The Protoss members could read up within their access limit at all times.

Lin Huang and Bloody knew that too.

Just when Lin Huang was thinking of how to answer Whale13’s question, next to him, Bloody spoke, “Well, I’ve loved reading stories since I was young. I would collect local stories wherever I go, including local folklores and historical information since they’re also in my reading range. Moreover, there are some folklores and history that can’t be found in the archives. Therefore, I always request to go to the archive whenever I go to a Shelter, no matter the size.”

Clearly, Whale13 suspected nothing from Bloody’s explanation.”Oh, I see. Ms. Bloody, you sure are knowledgeable. This whale is embarrassed.”

After the banquet, Whale13 made a copy of the star map and sent it to Lin Huang. He left after leading the duo to the archive.

The Dust Shelter was a grade-3 Shelter after all. Its archive was much bigger than the grade-1 Shelter earlier, and the documents were much more complete.

As Bloody was reading the documents, Lin Huang was checking the star map that Whale13 had sent him.

After a while, having browsed through the star map thoroughly, Lin Huang spoke to Bloody through voice transmission, “This star map still has no coincidental points in the star map in Qi Muxiong’s memory. However, we can basically confirm where we are now.”

“The star zone that we’re currently in is called the Dust Zone. It’s under the Northern Desert Star Zone, under the territory of grade-5 Shelter, the Golden Sand Shelter. The Northern Desert Star Zone is rather remote, almost at the northwestern border of the God Territory.

“Although the Golden Sand Shelter is considered the weaker one among the grade-5 Shelters. They have over 24 grade-4 Shelters and some 120 grade-3 Shelters under them. As it’s rather remote, the management guardians are pretty weak. Most of the Shelters are quite dangerous. Besides that, there are many fugitives who escaped here.

“Also, there is almost zero humans in the Northern Desert Star Zone. The God Territory isn’t a friendly place for humans, and the discrimination is even worse in the Northern Desert Star Zone. If I appear as myself, I’m afraid there would be people who are eager to beat me up.

“However, the problem is that my Disguise Card can only last for a day. It would mean that if I’d like to stay in this grade-3 Shelter, I would need to use one Disguise Card every day. My cards are my trump card. This would mean that I would have to use a trump card that could save my life even if I did nothing everyday. That’s not going to work in the long run.”

Although Lin Huang had disguise skills, given his imperial-level combat strength, he could not even deceive Virtual Gods, let alone true god-level powerhouses.

Bloody multitasked while giving Lin Huang a solution directly after hearing what he said, “There are actually two solutions to your situation. The first solution is to use a disguise god rule relic. You won’t expose yourself and you’ll save on your cards. If you’re still concerned, you can even use two god rule relics.

“The second solution is to appear as my God’s Servant. If that’s the case, you can use your human identity in public without a disguise.

“I’d recommend the first one of the two solutions. I think it’s better that you don’t expose your identity and appearance. This is the great world after all, and powerhouses are everywhere. It’s better to be cautious before you have definite confidence.

“However, true god-level is the most a god rule relic can deceive. There’s a chance that you might be exposed when you meet heavenly god-level powerhouses or top True Gods. All grade-4 Shelters have top high-rank True God guardians and Heavenly Gods in Shelters above grade-4. If you go for the first solution, you won’t be able to enter Shelters that are grade-4 and above.

“However, if we don’t go into the God Territory’s core zone, the information we get will be very limited, so I’m thinking that it’s best that we go our separate ways for our next journey. You’re a human, so you’ll encounter trouble everywhere you go in the God Territory. However, it’s a different case for me. Although I’m not a God’s Blood, it’s easy for me to join the Protosses with my quadruple-mutated wisdom-type complete human form. The Protoss is different from before; it’s not a world full of pure God’s Bloods any longer. All monsters of quadruple-mutation and above with complete human forms can join.”

“I’m worried about letting you go into the God Territory’s core zone alone.” Lin Huang thought about it for a moment and said while shaking his head, “I’ll go for the second solution, which is to go into the core zone with you as your God’s Servant.”

“If you decide to be my God’s Servant, you’ll need to spend most of your time with me. There will be a significant restriction on your mobility. If that’s the case, it’s very difficult for you to elevate your combat strength as you planned. After all, we only have a year. Moreover, your combat strength level will affect mine directly. You’ll have to seize every second to elevate your combat strength.

“If you’re still worried, you can summon Kylie to be with me. Kylie is a pure God’s Blood. Not only does she have powerful combat ability, but she also has her own army, as well as her speed and spatial divine abilities. My safety should be guaranteed since I have her with me.

“That’s the best solution that I can think of. Let’s go our separate ways. Kylie and I will get intel at the core zone while you’ll have to do everything you can to elevate your combat strength.”

Lin Huang nodded eventually after falling into silence for a long time. He knew that Bloody had indeed come up with the best solution available.

Chapter 1250: You Wish

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Half an hour had already passed when Lin Huang and Bloody left the archive.

In reality, Bloody spent less than ten minutes reading all of the documents. She spent the rest of the time discussing the year-long plans and arrangements with Lin Huang.

As the duo walked out of the archive, Whale13 appeared before them in a flash. “I just recalled there’s a Mr. Shu in this Shelter who loves telling all sorts of stories. Since, Ms. Bloody, you love listening to stories, both of you can stay a few days at my guardian residence. I’ll get someone to bring Mr. Shu over.”

“There’s no need for the trouble…”

Bloody took over the conversation just when Lin Huang wanted to reject him, “There’s no harm staying a day or two.”

Lin Huang peered at Bloody in doubt. He did not ask more since Whale13 was still standing next to them.

Bloody only explained through voice transmission after Whale13 left with their confirmation, “We only discussed the rough steps at the archive. I’ll need a little bit of time to prepare and arrange the detailed plans for this year. We can avoid interruption and being spied on if we stay at his guardian residence for now. Moreover, both of us don’t have authentic Protoss identities yet. We’ll expose ourselves if we stay at a hotel.

“Now, the priority is to have someone to get us an alternate identity. Also, you’ll need a disguise god rule relic. Get it as soon as you can.”

“An alternate identity…I’ve already figured who to get that from.” A person’s face soon appeared in Lin Huang’s head. “I’ll check out the disguise god rule relics in the Royal Market.”

Under the arrangement of Whale13’s butler, Lin Huang and Bloody soon checked into the guest room in the guardian residence.

The butler had arranged for a suite at the top floor of the guardian residence. Apart from the great view, it was connected straight to the little garden at the rooftop.

Lin Huang and Bloody could not help but look at each other when they saw the garden.

“The design of this garden is pretty unique. It seems to be the work of a master,” Bloody exclaimed to Lin Huang. She clearly wanted the butler to hear that.

As expected, the butler revealed a faint smile on his face. “Your humble one designed this garden. I learned gardening from a human master when I was younger, so I know a little bit about it.”

“No wonder…Humans indeed are brilliant in some aspects,” Bloody responded with a smile.

In reality, Lin Huang and Bloody could tell that the garden was designed by a human as soon as they saw it.

“That’s right. There are actually many humans that are very talented—” The butler stopped speaking all of a sudden. He seemed to have realized that the duo was Protosses, so it was inappropriate for him to compliment humans before them. He changed what he was going to say immediately, “However, no matter how talented humans are, they’re no match for the Protoss geniuses in our God Territory.”

Noticing that he was being inappropriate, the butler dared not speak nonsense again. He left right after he arranged their accommodation.

“It seems like not everyone in the God Territory discriminates against humans.” Lin Huang felt consoled about that.

“Indeed. However, the butler’s response earlier proved even more that it’s normal for humans to be discriminated in the God Territory.” Bloody, on the other hand, recognized the different perspective of the incident.

They talked about serious business after a brief chat on the humans’ position in the God Territory.

“Did you find anything useful from all of the documents that you read in the archive?”

“Yes, it’s much more detailed than the grade-1 Shelter earlier which only had official news documents. They only recorded the major incidents in the God Territory. Apart from news documents, the Dust Shelter archives have many other documents. They even have some recordings of incidents outside the God Territory.

“That organization Royal that you joined earlier…they have quite some information recorded here too. The latest news was from seven years ago when a Prince elevated to heavenly god-level. One of the Prince’s positions has been vacant ever since then.”

Lin Huang was stunned to hear that news.

A Prince of Royal was different from that from Dynasty. The lowest qualification for being a Royalty was a supreme genius. As long as they were alive, almost all members had the potential to elevate to true god-level.

That applied to normal members too. The criteria for the candidate was much stricter for a Prince of Dynasty.

Dynasty’s royal court would first vote among the candidates to be Prince. The royal court would then send the chosen candidates’ detailed documents to one of the Lords of Dynasty. After the Lord looked through the documents, he would have to approve the candidate himself to make the candidate a Prince.

As soon as one was awarded the Prince title, he would become one of the Lords of Dynasty’s nominal disciples. He might even be taught by the Lord himself.

In reality, for those who managed to enter the royal court list, they were basically guaranteed of their potential and quality in elevating to lord-level by the royal court.

However, the greater difficulty in achieving the title as Prince was that there was only a quota for 12 Princes of Dynasty in the entire great world.

The quota was almost always full and was hardly vacant.

Under normal circumstances, there would only be two situations when there was a vacancy. One was when a current Prince was dead while the other would be when a current Prince had elevated to heavenly god-level.

Lin Huang knew what the position of a Prince of Dynasty was as soon as he joined Royal. However, he did not care about that because it was too far away from him.

Although he was named the No. 1 genius of the era in the gravel world, he knew that the great world was much greater. To him, there must be many young people who had greater talents and gifts compared to him in the great world.

He did not think much about it even though he just heard about a vacant Prince position at the moment.

“This news was from seven months ago. There’s no more news about Royal deciding on a Prince since then. It means since seven months ago, they probably have yet to find a suitable replacement for the Prince of Royal. I think you stand a chance.” Bloody turned her head and looked at Lin Huang connivingly while smiling.

“Royal picks most of the candidates who are already on virtual god-level as their Prince. Before cultivators achieve virtual god-level, there are many unstable factors. No matter how powerful a genius is, they might be no different than an ordinary person as long as he doesn’t find the correct way to elevate to virtual god-level. I don’t even qualify the first basic condition with my imperial-level combat strength, so stop fooling around with me.” It was not that Lin Huang had no confidence, but he never believed in blind confidence.

“There are only two possibilities why Royal has yet to have a Prince since seven months ago. The first one would be that there’s no one suitable one among the candidate list who deserves the position. There’s even a high possibility that the Lord has rejected the candidate lists submitted by the Royal court many times. The second possibility would be there are many suitable candidates, but they can’t decide on one due to internal differences.

“If it’s the first possibility whereby the Lord hasn’t seen anyone that he likes and keeps rejecting the Royal court’s list, you’ll elevate to virtual god-level or even straight to True God if that drama drags out for a year. Won’t you be qualified by then?” Bloody shared the possibility in all seriousness.

‘You wish!’ Lin Huang could not help but scoff to himself at the moment.

Chapter 1251: Night and Shadow

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

After a while of chatting, the duo soon began working on their own.

Bloody began coming up with a detailed plan for the coming year following the information and documents she had.

Lin Huang, on the other hand, created a message with his communication device and sent it out.

“Old Yang, I’m Lin Huang. I’ve just arrived in the God Territory of a great world today. Are you still doing what you were before? I’m in a hurry for three fake identities; the sooner, the better. It’s inconvenient for me to make video calls and phone calls to you here, so we can keep in touch by text.”

Although there was a shield-like restriction in the guest room, theoretically, the outside world would not find out about whatever that was happening in the room. However, it was Whale13’s territory after all. Nobody knew if the room was bugged, so Lin Huang thought it was better to err on the side of caution.

He got a reply within ten seconds the text was sent. “Send me the names and photos. Come up with your identities. I can make Protoss identities too, but they are easily exposed in a God Territory above grade-5, thus I don’t suggest doing that. Also, no matter what identities you’re counterfeiting, you’d better disguise yourself properly and not expose any flaws.”

“I’ll send you the identities right away. Give me a minute. Can I ask approximately when I’ll get them?” Lin Huang replied as soon as he saw Yang Ling’s reply.

Yang Ling responded again a moment later, “It doesn’t take long to create fake identities. It can be done within half an hour at the most. However, it takes time for the logistics of the identity rings. If you’re in human territory, tomorrow will be the latest you can get them. However, since you’re in a God Territory, there’ll be a transfer in logistics. They’ll only reach at least three days later.

“Moreover, not all God Territories have goods receiving points in the Shelters. All Shelters of grade-5 and above undoubtedly have receiving points, but only approximately 10% of grade-3 Shelters and around 30% of grade-4 Shelters have receiving points.

“Send me your Shelter code. I’ll check the closest receiving point for you. I’ll send the goods to the receiving point then, and you’ll have to pick them up yourself.”

Lin Huang had never expected a God Territory’s logistics system to be so backward.

“Sure, I’ll pick them up myself. I’ll send you the documents soon.”

Lin Huang began discussing with Bloody again after exchanging messages with Yang Ling for a while.

“I’ve come up with a rough identity, but I’m not sure which tribe to use. I’ll get Yang Ling to make one up for me. You should think of an identity to disguise as. Come up with one for Kylie too.”

After all, they were in Whale13’s territory. For safety purposes, Lin Huang did not summon Kylie directly.

“The both of us will use our real identities,” Bloody replied almost without hesitation, “We’re going to stay in the core zone for a long time after all, and we might need to talk to people often. It might backfire easily if we disguise as other people, so we’ll just use our names and tribes.”

“It’s too risky to use your real identity.” Lin Huang frowned slightly when he heard her suggestion.

“There’s no harm actually. Kylie’s and my characteristics will stand out even more if we use our identities. Under normal circumstances, if something were to happen, it’s easy for one’s real identity to be tracked. Then, it’ll be more difficult for one to get away. It might be troublesome to others, but you can recall us back into card form which can wipe all trails immediately. If something really were to happen, all I need is to send you a message to get you to recall us back into card form.” Bloody seemed to be adamant about using her own identity.

“Besides that, they don’t lack powerhouses with high access in the core zone of the God Territory. There’ll be even more trouble if they find out about our fake identities. By using our real identities, even if they discover something wrong, we can say that we’re from a mini world. To avoid trouble, we bought fake identity rings, but we registered our authentic details. Even if the Protoss contacts our tribe to verify, there won’t be any problem at all.”

Lin Huang thought Bloody’s explanation made sense indeed.

Although Yang Ling had superb skills when it came to creating fake identities, this was the great world after all. Moreover, just like Bloody said, the core zone of the God Territory had many powerhouses with high access. If someone’s access was high enough to track their fake identities, that would spell trouble for them. However, if they were to register their fake identities with genuine information, even if the Protoss was to expose them, the most they could prove was that their identity rings were fake but their identities were authentic.

Even if Bloody could not find the exact tribe, other wisdom-types would definitely come forward to vouch for her. Meanwhile, Kylie was a pure God’s Blood herself who belonged to the Nephilic Judge Tribe which belonged to the superior bloodline among the Protoss. Among the superior bloodlines, there were only a few of them. As soon as she was exposed, the Nephilic Judge Tribe would definitely come forward for her.

Bloody only made the decision after some careful consideration and concluded that it would be safer to use their real identities.

Lin Huang stopped disagreeing with Bloody’s decision after some careful thoughts to himself.

After creating the three identities, Lin Huang sent them together with the Shelter code to Yang Ling.

Yang Ling soon replied with two messages, “Your location is really remote. I’ve checked. There are two receiving points that are closest to you. One is the Start Shelter (grade-3) and the other would be the Jupiter Shelter (grade-4). While the grade-4 Shelter is slightly closer to you, it doesn’t make much difference. So, which receiving point do you want me to send them to?

“Also, I’ve told you that fake Protoss identities are easily exposed in the God Territory. Are you sure you want your summoning beast, Kylie, to disguise as a Protoss? I’m not responsible for any after-sales service if there’s any problem with that.”

Lin Huang replied while smiling after reading Yang Ling’s message, “Send the goods to the grade-3 receiving point then. As for Kylie’s identity, it’s alright to disguise her as a Protoss. I won’t force you to take responsibility if something goes wrong.”

Two words popped up within three seconds Lin Huang sent the message. “Got it!”

After sorting out the fake identities, Lin Huang opened the Royal trading page and began looking at disguise god rule relics.

Soon, he saw two relics that he desired.

One was a black mask named Night. The mask was pure black and was adorned with golden droplets so tiny that one almost could not see them with their naked eye. They were like stars that lit up the night sky. Apart from that, there was a white precious stone the size of a thumb mounted on the forehead, resembling a full moon.

The effect of the mask’s rule could isolate any energy from penetrating from the outside. Not only did it block Divine Telekinesis and Divine Power, but it could also block a majority of energy impact, creating a certain level of defense.

The second relic was a cloak with a hood named Shadow. The cloak was pure black without any decoration or patterns. The effect of the rule was disappearing, including blocking one’s aura from being detected by the outside world.

In the beginning, Lin Huang struggled a while as he wondered which one to purchase. In the end, he decided to purchase both of them.

The starting price of a god rule relic was up to a million Divine Stones. Both god rule relics were expert-grade, so their price exceeded ten million Divine Stones. To be exact, both of them cost 46 million Divine Stones. It was not a small figure even to the wealthy Lin Huang.

He happened to only have just over ten million Divine Stones. He would have to sell lots of his resources to gather 46 million Divine Stones. That was the reason why he was struggling with which to purchase in the beginning.

However, after some consideration, he eventually decided to splurge on both the god rule relics for safety purposes.

Chapter 1252: Money Boss

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

In order to get money to purchase god rule relics, Lin Huang only left behind a couple of demigod and god relics that he usually used and sold the rest on the Royal trading market.

To sell all those demigod and god relics, he set them at a rather low price. They were even slightly cheaper than the market price. However, the speed of the goods being sold was much faster than Lin Huang expected.

Within less than ten minutes, up to a hundred demigod and god relics were sold.

“I thought I’d need at least two to three days to gather the remaining 30 million or so Divine Stones despite selling them cheaply. I can’t believe I made close to 10 million Divine Stones within ten minutes!” Lin Huang said as he checked the buyer record. However, he began to appear doubtful after doing so.

“What’s wrong?” Bloody noticed his expression immediately.

“This person seems to be the only one who bought up to a hundred of my goods just now,” Lin Huang said through voice transmission while grinning, “The buyer record shows that it comes from the same account with the username ‘Money Boss’.”

“One can tell from the username that the person is loaded,” Bloody said amusedly, “In reality, it’s not strange that this person bought so many things. You priced them slightly lower than the market price since you’re in a hurry. Anyone would know that they’d be sold at a much higher price if they were sold at an auction. This Money Boss has most probably bought so many demigod and god relics for reselling purposes.

“Of course, there’s another possibility. He might happen to have an underling who’s lacking equipment, so he desperately needs demigod and god relics. He bought the equipment for his underling without hesitation as soon as he saw what you were selling.

“The second possibility is too much of a coincidence. Moreover, this person has the username ‘Money Boss’. There’s a higher chance that he’s a businessman…”

As Lin Huang was chatting with Bloody, a message popped up on the Royal trading page all of a sudden. Lin Huang looked closely to see a message from Money Boss that he was discussing with Bloody.

“Why’s that guy looking for me?”

Skeptically, Lin Huang tapped open the message that the person sent through the Royal trading page.

“Hi, Mr. Lin, I saw that you’re selling many demigod and god relics today. They’re slightly cheaper than the market price. I suppose you’re in need of money, aren’t you?”

Lin Huang did not create a username on the Royal trading page and only showed his family name which was the default setting. He could not help but raise his brows upon receiving such a message coming from Money Boss out of nowhere.

“Why do I have a feeling that this is an usury advertisement? Is this guy offering me usury?”

Though skeptical, Lin Huang decided to chat with him to see what exactly this buyer wanted. He did not answer the person’s question. Instead, he gave a straightforward reply, “Give it to me straight and don’t beat around the bush.”

Money Boss’s message came one to two minutes later. “Well, I’m a businessman. Apart from doing some middleman business to make some commission, I do loans too to make some money from interest. I’m sending you this message to see if there’s a chance if we can come up with a business deal, Mr. Lin.”

As expected, it was an usury advertisement!

Lin Huang chose to reject decisively, “I won’t take a loan from you.”

“Usury isn’t what I’m doing. The annual interest is only 4% as long as you pay it off within three years. You can consider it, Mr. Lin.” Money Boss had yet to give up.

Lin Huang did not expect the rate to be even lower than the housing loan on Earth. “What if I fail to pay everything back within three years?” he asked curiously.

“The interest will be doubled for payback within three to ten years, which is 8%. It will double again for payback ten to 20 years, which is 16%…”

‘And you said it isn’t usury..,’ Lin Huang thought to himself secretly.

“I was just asking out of curiosity. Neither do I have the habit of borrowing money, nor do I have any interest in your usury business.”

Lin Huang thought the person’s hopes would be killed and he would stop clinging onto him after his reply. Never did he expect another message to pop up just when he was going to turn off the trading page.

“Since you aren’t interested in taking a loan, we can talk about another business, Mr. Lin.”

Lin Huang frowned slightly and replied with a question mark.

“I’ve looked through the number of goods and prices that you are selling this time. I speculate that you’re in need of money, Mr. Lin. The price of goods you’re letting go is 30 million Divine Stones. To be exact, it’s over 35 million Divine Stones. No offense, but may I know if you’re going to purchase something with the money?”

“I think that’s none of your business!” Lin Huang thought the person was nosy.

“I don’t mean to disturb you. Perhaps I can help you get a bargain if you’re using the money to purchase goods. I’ll apologize for disturbing you if the money is for something else and I’ll no longer disturb you.”

“Get me a bargain?” Lin Huang was skeptical. This person’s way of making business was clearly out of the ordinary.

“Yes, I’ll get you a bargain. I’ll take 30% of the difference while you’ll enjoy 70% of the discount.”

Money Boss seemed to be worried that Lin Huang might not understand and soon sent another message. “Let me give you an example. If an item’s original price is 10 million Divine Stones, I’ll save two million for you if I manage to bargain for eight million instead. You’ll pay me 30% of two million as commission, which will be 600,000. That means you only pay 8.6 million for something that was originally 10 million.”

“You mean you’ll purchase the goods at a bargain and resell it to me? How can I trust you not to sell it to me at a higher price? It’s totally possible for you to purchase a 10 million item at eight million and sell it at 12 million to me. If I’m desperate for the item, I suppose I’ll have to accept the price you offer, wouldn’t I?” Lin Huang voiced his doubt.

“I’ve considered such risk and doubts in trust for my clients’ sake. Therefore, I’ll only be responsible for getting the bargain for you. You’ll have to complete the purchase yourself as I won’t be participating in the deal. After the purchase is done, you’ll pay me the commission as agreed,” Money Boss replied.

“Do you really trust your clients? What if I take my word back and refuse to pay you the commission after the deal is done?” Lin Huang thought the person was pretty naive.

“I’ve encountered clients who’ve backed out on their words. However, they died soon after the deal was done without exception.”

Lin Huang did not think that the person was boasting after hearing what sounded like a threat. After all, the person dared to trust his clients. It proved that the person had a high possibility of being able to control the risk of his clients breaking their promise.

“What’s the confidentiality of the deal like?” Lin Huang was a little tempted now. After all, the two items would add up to 46 million. Even if the person only managed to get a 10% discount and take the 30% commission, he would save over three million which was quite a significant figure.

Clearly, Money Boss came to Lin Huang upon noticing that he was purchasing something expensive.

“I’m just a businessman who wants to do business. I won’t reveal a word about the business of all of my clients to anyone. There’s nothing to worry about, Mr. Lin.”

“Alright, there are indeed two items that I’d like to purchase. I’ll need to discuss the collaboration details with you to decide if we have a deal.” Lin Huang finally agreed to discuss more with the person since Bloody, who had been sparing a portion of her attention to observe the conversation, nodded.

Chapter 1253: Death Sickle

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Within two hours, close to 40 million Divine Stones worth of items that Lin Huang was selling in Royal’s market were almost sold. In reality, over 90% of them were purchased by Money Boss.

Lin Huang was finally relieved to have gathered enough money to buy god rule relics during his trip to the God Territory this time.

“I’ve got you a bargain. It will be a 22% discount for Night. The original price was 25 million and now it’s 19.5 million. You get 25% off for Shadow, which was originally priced at 21 million and is 15.75 million now. In other words, you’re only paying 35.25 million for something that was 46 million. The difference is 10.75 million. I’ll be taking 30%, which is 3.22 million. Let me round it up for you. Just transfer me 3.2 million after you’ve paid the buyers.”

“So, how do I trade with the sellers?” Lin Huang asked immediately.

“You’ll have to send the sellers a personal message. Tell them that you’re the buyer Money Boss mentioned. After that, just follow the steps they teach you.”

“Sure, I’ll transfer you the commission after the deal is done.”

Just when Lin Huang was done messaging Money Boss, he contacted both sellers immediately. The sellers changed the price of the items without hesitation as they changed their privacy to be visible to Lin Huang’s account.

The Royal trading system was very unique. Product logistics on the page did not matter, whereby the products would be transferred to the storage equipment the buyers set up directly as long as the purchase was successful.

The next official trade was completed smoothly within a minute. Lin Huang was finally relieved to see two extra god rule relics in his storage space.

He scanned through his storage equipment with his Divine Telekinesis and checked properly, confirming that both god rule relics were fine. Lin Huang then clicked Money Boss’s account and transferred the 3.2 million Divine Stones in commission over.

“I’ve transferred the Divine Stones to you. Please check.”

“Got it. It’s a pleasure working with you! Please get me to bargain for you again if you’re getting more god rule relics or business that’s more than 10 million Divine Stones in the future,” Money Boss replied almost instantly.

Lin Huang could not help but smirk when he saw the message. “I’ll definitely look for you next time.”

“Is it done?” Bloody had been sparing a portion of her attention to Lin Huang’s progress.

“I’ve gotten both of the god rule relics. I’ve checked them and all are good.” Lin Huang nodded.

“I’m basically done on my side too, but it’s a little inconvenient to finish the master plan now.” Bloody was also cautious. After all, they were in someone else’s territory now. “Let me give you a rough idea. We’ll discuss the details after I’m done with the master plan and I’ll send it to you tomorrow.

“First of all, you’ll have to summon Kylie after leaving this Shelter. The three of us will head to the Start Shelter to pick up our identity rings. Later on, Kylie and I will head to the core zone of the God Territory. You’ll disguise yourself and head to the next grade-3 Shelter.

“I’ve given a good thought about your identity. It’s best that you aren’t a lone ranger. The great world is different from the gravel world, and you’ll encounter plenty of trouble since you have no organization background. Although Royal is a huge organization, its headquarters is in a human territory that’s too far away from the God Territory. Distant water cannot quench the present thirst, thus it’s best that you join an organization in the God Territory.

“There are a couple of major organizations in the God Territory, but currently there are only two that are recruiting and are suitable for you. One would be the Combat God Temple while the other would be the Death Sickle.

“The Combat God Temple is the best choice for your need to kill a great number of virtual god-level monsters alone. The Combat God Temple is the biggest mercenary troop in the God Territory, whereby they take on all sorts of group hunting missions all year long. If you join them, not only can you hunt all sorts of monsters, but you’ll be given mission rewards from the Combat God Temple too.

“However, the biggest disadvantage of joining the Combat God Temple would be the lack of freedom. The reason being, all members will be put into a small troop and they’ll have to move as one unit. Although the troop can choose their own missions most of the time, sometimes there are some compulsory requisitions that you can’t say no to.”

Lin Huang frowned a little upon hearing this point. “Tell me about the Death Sickle then.”

“The Death Sickle is the biggest assassin organization and its main business is all sorts of assassination missions.

“The Death Sickle is very lax on their member recruitment. Almost all tribes can register as their reserve members regardless of their ability. The reserve members have all the freedom they want, and they can even reject all the missions. Of course, that would mean not having benefits at all.

“As long as the reserve members complete three assassination missions within a year or accept three specific missions within ten years, they’ll become an official Black Sickle Assassin.”

“So, there are ranks among Death Sickle members?” Lin Huang could not help but interrupt to ask.

“Yes, the ascending order of ranking in the Death Sickle would be the reserve, Black Sickle, White Sickle, Golden Sickle, and Blood Sickle. There are only seven Blood Sickle Assassins, all of whom are on heavenly god-level. The seven of them control all of Death Sickle’s decision-making.”

“So, what’re the benefits of the higher ranks?” Lin Huang asked again.

“The higher the ranking, the higher the grade of mission one gets and the better the reward. Reserve, Black Sickle, White Sickle, Golden Sickle, and Blood Sickle correspond with the grade of the mission. Reserve members can only take missions below virtual god-level, Black Sickles can only take missions below true god-level, White Sickles can only take missions below heavenly god-level missions, and so on and so forth…

“Not only are there mission rewards for completed missions, but there’re also accumulated points. One will earn a place on the Death Leaderboard when they have sufficient points. There are three leaderboards for the Death Sickle, which are the Black Sickle Leaderboard, the White Sickle Leaderboard, and the Golden Sickle Leaderboard. There are only 100 names on each leaderboard which will be renewed every day at 00:00. Throughout the month, those who manage to rank the top ten will receive a handsome reward.

“Those who are usually on the Black Sickle Leaderboard are top virtual god-level powerhouses. Those who rank the top three will receive a reward that is at least comparable to a god rule relic each month. The rewards for the White Sickle Leaderboard and the Golden Sickle Leaderboard are even better.”

“One per month would mean that one will get 12 god rule relics in a year. I’ve only gotten two god rule relics after my hard work in the gravel world and spending most of what I had. Meanwhile, the few of them on the leaderboard can earn that within two months! So, what’s the disadvantage of joining the Death Sickle?” Lin Huang turned his head to ask Bloody immediately.

“You must complete at least three missions each year if you become a Black Sickle. You can pick the missions within your own level. If you fail to complete a few of them in a year, you’ll be given a few specific missions in the next year. The specific missions are usually those that basically nobody is willing to do because they’re very risky.”

“Secondly, the number of hunts will definitely be lesser than those in the Combat God Temple if you join the Death Sickle. After all, the killing in the Combat God Temple is done in battles with many enemies. It’s more suitable for you to elevate your combat strength.”

“I’ll join the Death Sickle. I can go to battles on my own when there’s no mission. I just won’t get the reward that the Combat God Temple will be giving,” Lin Huang shared his thoughts, “To me, the Combat God Temple’s restriction is too much. Besides that, I’ll have to fight in a team, so there’ll be many techniques that I can’t use. I think the Death Sickle is better for me since I can fight on my own.”

“I figured you’d choose that.” Bloody shrugged helplessly.

Chapter 1254: Start Shelter

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Lin Huang and Bloody bade farewell to Whale13 early the next morning.

While Whale13 was surprised, he said nothing. All he did was pat Lin Huang’s shoulder heartily. “Go if something has come up. Don’t delay your business. Please come play at my Dust Shelter anytime when you’re free. I’ll welcome you with open arms at all times!”

Lin Huang summoned Kylie after bidding farewell to Whale13, and as soon as they left the Dust Shelter, he disguised himself using the two god rule relics.

The three then headed to Start Shelter at ease.

According to Yang Ling, the identity rings would need at least three days to reach the receiving point. Therefore, they were not in a hurry.

Under normal circumstances, they would need to transfer at only five Shelters to get from the Dust Shelter to Start Shelter. However, there were two grade-4 Shelters among them. For safety purposes, they decided to take a longer en route whereby they transferred 11 times at grade-3 Shelters along the way.

Fortunately, none of their identities were suspected at all. Bloody would even request the Shelter guardian for permission to read at their archives at each Shelter. None of the 11 Shelters rejected her, which allowed her to gain access to more documents and information.

Apart from asking about the mission at the beginning, Kylie was cold and arrogant as usual. She did not even ask about the details of the mission, and Bloody was the one who took the initiative to tell her.

Meanwhile, Lin Huang spent most of the time shopping at underground black markets and auctions. Whilst familiarizing himself with the market prices, he was trying his luck with worthy items.

His new disguise was a man in a black robe that was transformed from his god rule relic, Shadow. It was completely different from earlier and was adorned with a simple golden pattern from the pure black before.

Meanwhile, his mask was transformed from his god rule relic, Night. The delicate mask was now pitch black. It was so black that it could even absorb the diffused reflection of the light. Apart from that, there was a layer of black mist lingering around it.

The hoodie of the cloak would hide whatever that was beneath it even during the day as long as the light did not shine directly on one’s face. After putting on the mask, even if the light were to shine directly, one could only see a black silhouette.

Three days later, the trio arrived at the Start Shelter.

Lin Huang was a little shocked to see skyscrapers and crowds when they arrived. “Why’s this Shelter so crowded? I suppose a grade-4 Shelter isn’t as crowded as this!”

“Although Start Shelter is only a grade-3 Shelter, it has the top standard among grade-3 Shelters. The crowd is even larger compared to some remote grade-4 Shelters,” Bloody explained through voice transmission.

“I heard the guardian of Start Shelter, whose name is Start, is a pure Protoss. His father is a rather famous Heavenly God who’s also the guardian of a grade-5 Shelter.

“Due to his background, many guardians of grade-3 and grade-4 Shelters nearby are willing to be his friends, and they have trade agreements with Start Shelter. When Start Shelter was newly built, many neighboring guardians brought businesses and immigrants to them, making Start Shelter develop quickly. After Start Shelter elevated to a grade-3 Shelter, Start’s father used his connection in the God Territory to get him the privilege of a receiving point. Since then, the Shelter prospered completely.”

“A pure Protoss whose dad is a Heavenly God…” Lin Huang frowned slightly. “We don’t even have identity rings now. If we visit him, we might expose ourselves.”

“We don’t have to visit him this time. There are up to a million people coming in and out of Start Shelter every day. There are always True Gods and Protosses coming in and out. If Start has to host those guests every day, I guess he’d have to host at least a hundred times throughout the year.

“I heard that he’s arrogant whereby he looks down on ordinary Protosses and True Gods, and he doesn’t care to befriend them. Moreover, we’re only staying for a day or two to pick up our stuff. There’s no need to embarrass ourselves by visiting him.”

“So, you’re not going to their archive?” Lin Huang asked.

“Although Start Shelter is crowded, it’s just a grade-3 Shelter after all. I’ll have many opportunities to visit grade-4 and grade-5 Shelters in the future.”

“Then, let’s look for a place to stay. We’ll leave right after we pick up our stuff. Let’s not have any contact with him.” Lin Huang began browsing for hotels as soon as he was done speaking.

The receiving point of Start Shelter was located in the central zone of the entire Shelter which was also where the guardian residence was. They were only less than a kilometer apart from each other.

It was the most crowded place in the entire Shelter. Above 90% of the luxury hotels in the Shelter were located in this area, making up more than 70% of the Shelter hotels that were in the central zone.

Although they had no identity ring in the God Territory, Lin Huang picked a small hotel where registration was unnecessary. He got them the biggest three-room suite in the hotel.

When they opened the door to the suite, Lin Huang realized it was the crudest room that he had ever stayed in since he traveled to this world.

Although the three rooms were close to 100 square meters large, the walls were all white and the ceilings were made of plaster. Apart from a bed, a wardrobe, a table, and a chair, there were almost zero decorations.

Although there was a fabric couch in the living room, it looked like it had been there for at least 20 years. The coffee table before it seemed to be made of glass, but there were four to five cracks on it.

Lin Huang thought that the glass coffee table might crack entirely if he were to put an ashtray on it.

“Let’s change hotels.” Lin Huang did not mind the place, but he felt bad for the two ladies, Bloody and Kylie, to be staying at such a place.

Kylie glanced through the living room quickly. “We’ll stay here since it’s only for one or two days.”

“We don’t have identity rings now. I suppose hotels that accept frauds like us would have similar conditions. It doesn’t really make sense to change to another hotel. Let’s just stay here then,” Bloody agreed to stay too.

“Alright then. Let’s tidy up our rooms. It might be slightly bearable if we clean it up a little,” Lin Huang suggested.

Both ladies nodded in agreement.

The trio spent half an hour to tidy the rooms completely. Although it did not look like it had been renovated, at least, it was more pleasing to the eye than before.

Lin Huang thought he would let the ladies stay in the bigger rooms while he occupied the smallest one.

However, Bloody realized that the smallest was only six or seven square meters large. The entire room was cramped with the bed and a wardrobe. Not only that, there was not even a tiny window for ventilation. Therefore, she suggested staying in the same room with Kylie while Lin Huang took the bigger room.

Kylie did not reject the suggestion.

The man and the two ladies then stayed in the Start Shelter’s small hotel.

Chapter 1255: 0618

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

After a night at the small hotel, Lin Huang’s communication device vibrated all of a sudden before dawn came.

He tapped it opened and realized that it was an unknown number.

“Your stuff should arrive at the Start Shelter in the afternoon today. If you guys aren’t there yet, please get there as soon as you can to pick them up. There are plenty of flaws in the God Territory’s logistics system. It’s very common for some Shelters to lose parcels. The longer the parcels are left at the receiving point, the higher the chances of them being lost.”

Lin Huang knew it was Yang Ling who sent the message without even looking at the signature.

“We arrived yesterday.” Lin Huang turned off the communication page after the brief reply. He peeked at the time. It was only 4.51 a.m. Through the window, he could see that the sky was still dark, so he turned around on the bed and pulled the blanket over himself, shutting his eyes again.

He slept all the way past seven in the morning, only stirring calmly upon hearing the chatter between Bloody and Kylie.

Lin Huang walked to the living room to see both Bloody and Kylie there. He said through voice transmission, “Yang Ling said the stuff will arrive around the afternoon. We’ll have breakfast soon and walk around. In the afternoon, we’ll head there straight to pick up the stuff.”

After washing up, the three of them put on their black robes again and headed out.

Lin Huang was already disguised as a man in a black robe. Meanwhile, as Bloody and Kylie looked exactly like Protosses, they would definitely attract unwanted attraction if they were to check into such a small hotel in their own forms. Therefore, they put on a cloak and a mask just like Lin Huang did when they checked into the hotel. Both their cloaks and masks were god relics. However, the small hotel was located in the central zone of Start Shelter which was close to the guardian residence. Not many True Gods would step on Start’s feet and pry with their Divine Telekinesis as they wished.

Moreover, most people who would stay at such a small hotel were usually problematic. They were either fugitives or were hiding something embarrassing. They knew where they stood, so they would not pry to avoid any unnecessary incidents.

It was only 8 a.m. after spending some 20 minutes eating their breakfast.

The auctions and markets at the Shelter had yet to open. However, the underground market was already opened for business.

The Start Shelter black market was in an alley somewhere next to the guardian residence. In reality, the guardian, Start, was the mastermind behind the black market. Most of the people in the Shelter knew that, but nobody dared say it out loud.

Start had a Heavenly God supporting him, and as a Protoss himself, nobody dared to report his business. Everyone knew that the most that would happen to the black market would be it closing down even if someone were to report it. With Start’s background, it was basically impossible for him to be punished.

The three of them took a stroll at the black market. They spent over two hours to look at all the shops and stalls. Since they did not see anything they wanted, they left the black market alley empty-handed.

After getting out of the black market, they casually strolled through the auctions and markets that had been opened for a while.

It was past 1 p.m. when they were done shopping. Figuring that he had yet to receive any notification about their parcel, Lin Huang took Bloody and Kylie to a restaurant with a good reputation for lunch.

As they began eating after the dishes were served, Lin Huang’s communication device vibrated all of a sudden. Again, the message still came from an unknown number. Lin Huang knew it was Yang Ling who sent it as soon as he tapped it open.

The message was brief with only two sentences. “The logistics system on my side shows that the stuff has arrived at Start Shelter. If you’re not busy, it’s best that you pick them up today. I took some time to check the God Territory’s receiving point, and I found out that the Shelter always loses parcels.”

Naturally, Bloody and Kylie saw the contents of the message since Lin Huang’s communication device messages were set to pop up.

“Let’s go there right after we finish lunch,” Bloody said instantly as she was concerned that the stuff might get lost.

Lin Huang nodded and turned off the communication page. He then proceeded with lunch. It was not even 2 p.m. when they exited the restaurant and headed straight to the receiving point immediately.

The receiving point was on a main road. The shop was pretty large, and there were two lines queuing at the entrance. The longer line was for the delivery of mail with some 20 people there. The pick-up line was shorter as there were only six people queuing.

Lin Huang and the other two queued quietly behind the pick-up line and waited for the people before them to collect their stuff patiently.

The first of the six picked up their stuff and left successfully. When it was the second person’s turn, he began arguing with the shop owner.

“My stuff should’ve arrived last night! The pick-up details on my communication device clearly state that my stuff arrived at 11.21 last night. Now, you’re telling me that you didn’t receive them?!” It was a muscular elephant-person who was yelling loudly.

“Why are you screaming?! I told you that we didn’t receive it. Isn’t it normal to lose parcels? You’re not the only one whose parcel is lost,” responded the shop owner who was a skinny and short human-faced monkey around 1.4 meters tall. Although he was almost a meter shorter than the elephant-person, the latter was nothing to him.

“You guys are doing logistics as your business. Does it make sense for you guys to lose stuff?!” The elephant-person was enraged to hear such a nonchalant answer.

“You should ask around and see which receiving point in the God Territory never loses their parcels.” The human-faced monkey did not intend to apologize at all. “I can only say that you have shoddy luck to lose your parcel. There’s no one to blame. Stop blocking my way and interrupting my business.”

“I won’t leave if you don’t give me my stuff! I’ll block your entrance and paralyze your business!” The elephant-person began throwing a tantrum.

“Are you sure you want to block my way?!” A cold gleam flashed through the human-faced monkey’s eyes. Almost at the same time, a terrifying aura came out of his body for merely a second.

Even the pupils of Lin Huang and the other two who were queuing at the back shrank. The human-faced monkey’s aura was clearly at peak virtual god-level. They could tell by the intensity of his aura that he was but a step away from stepping to true god-level.

The elephant-person who was supposed to collect his parcel peed in his pants then and there. He only had imperial-level combat strength and had never come in such close contact with a Virtual God before.

Fortunately, the aura was fleeting. If it really suppressed him, losing control of his bladder might not be the only thing that would happen; his soul might collapse shortly.

“Get lost!” The human-faced monkey scoffed. In turn, the elephant-person turned around and ran away while shuddering. He dared not stay even for a moment.

The expression of the people queueing at the back became complicated when they looked at the human-faced monkey again.

“Next!” The human-faced monkey pretended like nothing happened as he called out to the next person.

The pick-up queue was moving fast. It was Lin Huang and the rest’s turn within three minutes. Not one of the next five people after the elephant-person lost their parcels, much to their relief.

“Pick-up code: 0618,” Lin Huang stated his pick-up code directly.

The human-faced monkey lifted his head to peer at Lin Huang and subsequently glanced at Bloody and Kylie who were wearing masks and cloaks. He spoke a moment after lowering his head, “I can’t find your pick-up code here.”

Chapter 1256: The Guardian’s Visit

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Lin Huang could not help but frown a little when he heard the human-faced monkey announce that he could not find the pick-up code. However, nobody could see the expression on his face since he wore a mask.

Next to Lin Huang, Bloody spoke up first, “Do you mean that our parcel is lost?”

The human-faced monkey squinted at Bloody. “Since we can’t find the pick-up code, it’s usually stolen. Smaller items are susceptible to that.”

Bloody turned her head to look at Kylie next to her after hearing that. She nodded at her imperceptibly.

Kylie stretched her arm out and took off her mask, revealing her cold face. At the same time, she released her pure God’s Blood aura and recalled it immediately.

The human-faced monkey was stunned when he saw Kylie’s human features. Subsequently, his expression changed dramatically when he sensed the fleeting pure God’s Blood aura of the Protoss.

One must know that they were in a God Territory, thus it was Protoss territory. Among Protosses, pure Protosses were the most arrogant and bossiest. Moreover, most of them had a terrifying background.

Whilst the human-faced monkey was unsure about what to do, Bloody, who was standing aside, spoke again, “Boss, why don’t you look for it carefully again?”

The human-faced monkey nodded immediately. “Perhaps I missed it just now. Let me check again.”

Kylie glared at him coldly and said nothing. She put on her mask again.

The bunch of people queuing behind did not see Kylie’s face. Only a handful of them sensed her fleeting Protoss aura and knew what happened while the rest of them were confused.

“Isn’t the owner all high and mighty? Why is he giving in now?”

“Yeah, he always calls the shots whenever the parcel can’t be found. Whoever questions him would normally be chased away. Why is he looking for the pick-up code for the second time today?”

The human-faced monkey held his head down and checked again. Soon, he lifted his head and passed Bloody a little carton the size of a palm.

“I found it. Indeed, I missed it earlier.”

The trio did not trouble the human-faced monkey further after taking the parcel. They turned around and left immediately.

The human-faced monkey was relieved when he saw them leave without saying anything. Although he was confident in his ability, he dared not offend any Protoss. It was the Protosses’ territory after all.

Lin Huang and the other two did not expect such an incident to happen. Fortunately, they managed to get their identity rings in the end. They returned to the small hotel as soon as they received the parcel.

After they got into the hotel room, they opened the parcel. The three rings had different styles, but there was a little label on top of each ring. Among them were Bloody and Kylie’s names while another one had ‘Xie Lin’ written on it.

The name of the label was correct. Lin Huang used a fake name of Xie Lin, switching around the name Lin Xie that he had used in the past.

They removed the label after retrieving their identity rings. Then, they began claiming ownership by dripping their blood onto the rings. After the ownership claiming was done, the three of them began familiarizing themselves with the identity rings.

Although the identity ring in the great world had many features that were different from those in the gravel world, most of the functions were similar. The functions on the page were just slightly more complicated with different interfaces.

Lin Huang merely spent a few minutes to learn all the functions of the new ring.

Bloody had used Lin Huang’s identity in the past under his authorization, so with her intelligence, her speed of picking up the information was even faster than Lin Huang. She spent less than half a minute to familiarize herself with the identity ring completely.

Kylie spent a little more time on it since she had never used an identity ring before. Under Bloody’s guidance, she only learned how to use the identity ring roughly half an hour later.

At the same time that the trio picked up the identity rings, a piece of news reached Start Shelter’s guardian residence quietly.

“There were three people who are suspected to have disguised as Protosses at the receiving point earlier. We’ve confirmed them one of them is a female pureblood Protoss. The other two were disguised, so we failed to detect their real identities. We speculate them to most probably be Protosses too. The three of them have a combat strength of beginner-stage virtual god-level.”

Half-naked, Start, who was revealing his muscular body, raised his brows slightly as he read the message while sitting in a cultivation room with his legs crossed.

“Three beginner-stage virtual god-level Protosses…Why bother to disguise themselves just to pick something up?”

A ring of waves reverberated behind Start just when he mumbled as if he was talking to himself. A rather husky voice came slowly, “There are three possibilities. The first one is that the goods are extremely important. Secondly, the goods are shady. Thirdly, the three of them are shady. There’s a certain chance that the three possibilities overlap one another.

“They probably don’t want to attract any attention picking up their stuff at your territory. After all, Start Shelter is just a grade-3 Shelter.”

“Interesting…” Start smirked.

…

In the small hotel, the trio who were familiarized with the identity ring’s applications were preparing to leave Start Shelter when someone knocked on the hotel room’s door all of a sudden.

Their expressions changed.

“Who is it?!”

A thick male voice came behind the door slowly, “Your humble one is Start. I heard that there are three Protosses of the same kind staying here, so I thought I’d make a trip to visit.”

The three of them were stunned to hear that. Never had they thought that the Shelter guardian would come to them when they were leaving.

Lin Huang merely hesitated for a moment before he walked forward in big steps and opened the door. “It’s the Master Guardian. What a pleasure!”

Start glanced at the three of them. With his True God’s vision, he saw through Bloody and Kylie’s disguises.

Although he was not sure if Bloody was a Protoss, a glimpse was all it took for him to confirm that Kylie was the pureblood Protoss who had revealed her face at the receiving point earlier.

He shifted his attention and his gaze landed once more on Lin Huang who had opened the door. However, he could not see what was hiding under his disguise, so he could not help but feel doubtful.

“You sure are uptight with your attire, little brother.”

“I’ve been scared of the cold since I was born, so I wore a bit more,” Lin Huang responded while smiling, “Please come in, Master Guardian.”

Start nodded and walked into the room. He could not help but shake his head after looking around. “I suppose the three of you didn’t have to stay somewhere so crude even if you don’t want anyone to know that you’re in my Start Shelter, did you?”

“We just don’t want unnecessary trouble,” Lin Huang responded, “May I know if there’s anything that we can do for you, Master Guardian?”

“Nothing, I just heard my people say that they saw Protosses of my own kind. I thought I should meet you guys and make friends.” Start turned around and looked at Lin Huang with a smile.

“That’s all?” Lin Huang asked while frowning a little.

“That’s all!”

“We’re just here to pick up a parcel. We’ll leave today,” Lin Huang said clearly. He did not want any trouble or to be friends with the guardian.

“You’re leaving so soon? I thought of getting you guys to stay at my residence if you’re staying for a few days more. This is my territory, and I should be a good host since it’s a rare occasion to meet Protosses of my own kind,” Start invited, grinning.

“Thanks for your kindness, Master Guardian, but we can’t take it. There’s something that we need to handle as soon as possible, so we won’t be staying. If we have the opportunity to come to Start Shelter again, we’ll definitely stay longer and make it a proper visit.” Lin Huang’s rejection was very cordial. He was mentally prepared to attack if Start insisted on him staying.

However, Start seemed to really have no ill intentions. He nodded and said warmly, “I shan’t get you guys to stay since there’s something that you must deal with. Let’s exchange contact numbers to keep in touch. If you guys are free to come to Start Shelter again, just come straight to my residence. I’ll welcome you guys at any time!”

Then, he bade farewell to Lin Huang and the other two after they exchanged numbers.

Lin Huang thought it was strange when Start left. “What was that guy thinking? Did he come all the way here just to get our number?”

However, Bloody had seen through Start’s trick. “He wants to check our identities through our contact.”

“So what if he finds out about our identities?”

“After all, Kylie exposed her pureblood Protoss identity. Perhaps he has the intention to keep in touch with us because of that. If Kylie’s tribe is from a major organization among the Protosses, having her contact would create the possibility to be in contact with a major tribe. If he finds out that we’re insignificant among the Protosses, he’ll just delete our contacts and cut ties. All he did was waste a couple of minutes to meet us.”

Chapter 1257: Death Sickle

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

At Start Shelter’s guardian residence, a shirtless Start sat in the middle of the cultivation room. The communication ring on his finger vibrated all of a sudden. He opened his eyes slowly and tapped on the message that just came in.

“I’ve identified the three of them. Among them, the man isn’t a Protoss. According to the archive records, he’s a quadruple-mutated mysterious-type. The two females are Protosses, the tribe of one of which isn’t recorded, so she should belong to an insignificant tribe. The other one is a pureblood Protoss. According to the records, she’s from the Nephilic Judge Tribe.”

“From the Nephilic Judge Tribe?!” Start could not help but raise his brows.

Although the Nephilic Judge Tribe was considered a rare tribe due to the number of Protosses

whereby there were only some 100 people in the entire tribe, many of them ranked high among the Protoss. Moreover, more than one of them that were Heavenly Gods.

In other words, Kylie was much more powerful than Start when it came to their background.

Although Start’s father was a high-level Heavenly God, among the Nephilic Judge Tribe, there were three high-level Heavenly Gods that were known to the public at the moment. It was said that even one of them was going to be lord-level.

“It seems like it’s necessary for me to get closer to them,” Start nodded lightly.

After some thought, Start decided to speak to his father to give a brief description of Lin Huang and the other two. He sent his father a text.

A moment later, a reply came. “Give me their contact numbers.”

Start then sent all three of their contact numbers over.

Within half a minute, another text came. “You’re being deceived. The three identities are fake. It’s a heavy offense to disguise as a Protoss. I’ve reported the two fake Protosses to the related organization.”

Start was stunned to see the message. ‘They’re fake?! But I sensed a pureblood Protoss’s aura from one of the ladies clearly.’

Although he was secretly doubtful, Start did not suspect his own father, so he did not ask further. All he did was reply, “Alright, Father. I know now.”

‘Since Father has found out that their identities are fake, there must be something wrong with them. Perhaps the pureblood Protoss’s aura that I sensed was the disguise of that lady’s god rule relic…”

Start squinted slightly after exiting the communication page. He spread his Divine Telekinesis quickly so that it covered the entire Shelter immediately. However, he could no longer sense Lin Huang and the rest.

…

After sending the guardian, Start, off at the hotel, the trio left Start Shelter right away, going on their own ways.

Bloody and Kylie took the effort to head to the grade-4 Stop Shelter.

Meanwhile, Lin Huang passed through a couple of grade-3 Shelters consecutively. Following the route that Bloody planned, he headed to the grade-3 Shelter, the Iron Fist Shelter.

After getting out of the Iron Fist Shelter’s dimensional portal, he headed straight to where the Death Sickle was.

Among grade-3 Shelters, the Iron Fist Shelter was considered the top in terms of how it was modeled. It was even more crowded than Start Shelter. The main reason was that this Shelter happened to be located among some ten grade-4 Shelters, so it naturally became an interchange point.

Apart from its fortunate location, the Iron Fist Shelter had existed for over 30,000 years, thus it was considered one of the oldest grade-3 Shelters left behind in the God Territory at the moment.

The Iron Fist Shelter would have been upgraded to a grade-4 Shelter if not for the fact that there was no inhabitable planet close to it. However, although it was only a grade-3 Shelter, the Iron Fist Shelter was considered to best even grade-4 Shelters when it came to its population. Many organizations made it their stationary point for the convenience.

Lin Huang was there for the Death Sickle.

Although it was a major organization, the Death Sickle was rather low-key on their conduct. Their stationary point was located in an alley of the Iron Fist Shelter black market.

Lin Huang found the place soon according to the coordinates Bloody found.

The Iron Fist Shelter black market was crowded even during the day. It was packed like the morning market with people going in and out of the nine intersecting alleys in the black market.

There would even be shouts of bargains from time to time on both sides of the road. Lin Huang felt suspicious that he might be in the wrong place.

Fortunately, he found the two-story building in the picture that Bloody gave based on the coordinates that she marked. The short building only had two floors. The tiles on the top floor were dark-green while the door was black. A red lantern was hung at the entrance, its illumination adding a tiny bit of liveliness to the entire building.

Lin Huang shook his head while smiling. Although low-key, this building was out of place compared to the other houses around it. The houses around were basically three stories high with tall roofs, and they were at least five meters taller than the short building. All of the roofs had red tiles. None of them were of any other color.

After making sure that he got the right place, he strode in confidently. He glanced around quickly as soon as he stepped in.

The lobby was rather dim. There was a long counter just across the entrance, but it was unattended. To be exact, there was nobody in the entire lobby.

“Anybody here?!” Lin Huang shouted since nobody came to greet him.

A silhouette walked out of the shadows not far from Lin Huang as soon as he spoke.

His pupils shrunk a little because he did not sense the person coming at all.

“You look like a stranger. I guess it’s your first time here. Are you here to delegate a task or to pick something up?”

The man who walked out of the shadows was skinny. There was a scar that was close to five centimeters long under his left eye which looked a little like a tearstain. With a black tail on his back, Lin Huang could not tell what kind of monster it was.

This person’s aura was very well-preserved whereby one could not tell his combat strength at all. However, judging by his appearance out of nowhere, Lin Huang could tell that he was at least a high-level Virtual God. There was a high possibility that he could even be a True God.

Lin Huang observed the man for a while and quickly looked away, announcing, “I would like to join the Death Sickle. What should I do?”

“Give me your contact number. I’ll send you the registration form to fill in,” Scarface said expressionlessly.

After sending his contact number to Scarface, Lin Huang received the registration form almost instantly. Scarface turned around directly without waiting for Lin Huang to tap open the form and said stonily, “Send it back to me when you’re done.”

“What do I do with the parts that I don’t know?” Lin Huang asked immediately.

“Leave it blank,” Scarface replied without even turning his head.

Lin Huang scanned through the registration form roughly after opening it. In reality, there was nothing much to be filled. He did not bother to ask Scarface further, so he filled up the form after skipping a few questions which involved his privacy. He then sent it back to Scarface.

Within a minute, Scarface appeared out of nowhere again.

“Should I fill in those that I left blank?” Lin Huang had come up with a story himself. Never had he thought that Scarface would toss him a wooden token immediately.

Lin Huang held his head down to look at the token after catching it. It was only the size of half a palm and seemed to be made of ordinary wood. There was the character ‘reserve’ written in the middle of the token. He realized that it was the Death Sickle’s reserve token.

“Enter the code on the token on the page that you’ve just registered on. You’ll be an official reserve member when the binding is completed.”

Chapter 1258: The Torturous Reserve

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

After performing a surprisingly simple registration at Death Sickle’s base, Lin Huang soon left the black market and found a nearby hotel to use as a temporary residence.

Only when he was at the hotel did he begin to study Death Sickle’s website in earnest.

As Bloody had said, it was easy to join the Death Sickle organization. All he had to do was fill in an incomplete form and he immediately became a reserve member.

However, reserve members had extremely limited access.

On the official website, apart from public messages that could be found on the internet, the forum only contained a section for reserve members and a section for missions. There were also access restrictions in the missions section; he was only able to look at reserve-level missions.

As for the forum itself, there were access restrictions on even the message and trading sections.

“That’s what you get for being a reserve member. It’s no different from being a passerby,” Lin Huang could not help but exclaim after giving the website a general once-over.

Not long after though, Lin Huang found a sticky that was pinned to the reserve members’ section. The post was entitled Rules and Regulations For Promotion of Death Sickle Members.

He clicked on the post immediately, which took him less than a minute to read. Now he finally had a complete understanding of how Death Sickle’s ranking system worked.

Just like what Bloody had found earlier, Death Sickle members were ranked in the order of reserves, Black Sickle, White Sickle, Gold Sickle, and Blood Sickle.

A normal registration would make one a reserve member straight away.

Reserve members only needed to complete three assassination missions within a year or take on three designated missions within ten years to become official Black Sickle members.

In actuality, there was also a real-name registration process that would allow one to bypass the reserves level and directly become a Black Sickle member.

However, this particular process required a recommendation from an official Death Sickle member. Not only that, the person would need to register their real name; their combat strength and ability had to be above virtual god-level as well. They would also have to pass an actual combat assessment. They could only skip over the reserves level and become a Black Sickle member if they passed their identity checks as well as their combat assessment.

Two conditions had to be fulfilled for Black Sickle members to be promoted to White Sickle members.

The first was to be in the top three places on the Black Sickle Leaderboard’s monthly rankings for three consecutive months.

The second was to complete a True God assassination mission, which was a trial mission assigned when the promotion was requested.

The conditions for White Sickle members to be promoted to Gold Sickle members were similar.

Apart from being in the top three spots on the White Sickle Leaderboard monthly rankings for three consecutive months, one also needed to complete a Heavenly God assassination mission.

The conditions for Gold Sickle members to be promoted to the highest rank of Blood Sickle were even stricter.

The basic condition for promotion was to maintain the number one spot on the Gold Sickle Leaderboard monthly rankings for three years consecutively without missing a single month.

They had to carry out three trial missions, each to assassinate a half-step Lord.

“Judging by that last condition, although on the surface it seems as if there’s no lord-level guardian in Death Sickle, the seven Blood Sickle members should at least be at the level of half-step lord instead of the ordinary peak-stage Heavenly God,” Lin Huang exclaimed, unable to restrain himself, “If these seven Blood Sickle powerhouses have the ability to kill half-step Lords, the power of seven of them combined might be on par with a Lord.”

After Lin Huang had finished reading this pin, he checked out other pins on the forum as well as the stickies with the most comments.

He only returned to the main page after scrolling over the reserve members section for over three hours.

“The access for reserve members is too limited. I must get promoted to Black Sickle level as soon as possible so I can take on missions to assassin Virtual Gods.” Now that he had a rough understanding of Death Sickle’s organization and hierarchy, Lin Huang was able to come up with a plan very rapidly. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go the route of using the identity check, so I can only be promoted through normal channels. That means I’ll need to complete three reserve missions.”

Once he had considered things to this point, Lin Huang clicked on the missions page and began looking for missions that suited him.

Due to the restrictions, Lin Huang could only access the reserves missions listed in the missions section. Despite that, he found plenty there

to occupy him.

After giving the matter some thought, Lin Huang chose to sort these missions by distance.

He wanted to be promoted as soon as he could, so naturally the closer the mission was, the better. He did not bother to take into consideration the difficulty level and the reward points.

“Mission: Assassinating Ai Yun”

“Location: Iron Fist Shelter”

“Target’s Details: Son of Ai Rong the Iron Fist, combat strength: imperial-level”

“Mission Reward Points: 10,000 points”

Lin Huang was stunned when he saw the first mission that popped up according to distance.

The location was the Iron Fist Shelter, which was the Shelter that Lin Huang was currently in. In addition, it was worth 10,000 mission reward points. The points were comparable to those awarded for killing a new first-rank True God.

Lin Huang had never heard of Ai Yun. However, the name Ai Rong was familiar to him because it was the name of the Iron Fist Shelter’s guardian.

According to the information that Bloody provided earlier, Ai Rong had been a ninth-rank True God since time immemorial. No one had yet been able to measure the extent of his abilities.

Lin Huang then looked through Ai Yun’s information again. He discovered that not only was the boy Ai Rong’s youngest son, he was also Ai Rong’s only remaining son.

However, Ai Yun was only imperial-level in combat strength—or at least the combat strength that he demonstrated to the outside world was only imperial-level, and he did not seem to harbor any potential for cross-ranking battles.

Perhaps it was because Ai Yun was only imperial-level that the mission was also open to reserve members.

However, Lin Huang skipped the mission without hesitation and went straight to the next one on the list.

This mission was nearby, but it was not worth offending a top True God just to get promoted to be a Black Sickle member.

After spending some ten minutes doing simple filtering, Lin Huang selected three missions that he deemed suitable.

“Kill the Boa Seal Shelter guardian Vine Boa.”

“Kill Violet Rat Shelter guardian Lumi Rat.”

“Kill a Poisonous Swamp Frog to retrieve venom.”

Both Boa Seal and Violet Rat Shelters were grade-1 Shelters. Moreover, they were both on the same planet and near the Iron Fist Shelter.

The reason nobody was willing to take on these two missions was not that both Shelter guardians were so powerful, but because both Shelters had a massive number of monster tribes in them. Though they were merely grade-1 Shelters, they housed about a million members of the same tribe. The population alone was comparable to that of a top grade-3 Shelter.

Meanwhile, both of the missions were only published in the missions section for reserve members for a reward of 100 points, respectively.

Given these missions were high risk and low return, it made sense that nobody was willing to take them on.

The Poisonous Swamp Frog was located on a miasmic planet close to the Boa Seal Shelter and the Violet Rat Shelter. The entire planet was covered in toxic mist, and almost all living things in its ecosystem were poisonous.

The layer of toxic mist alone could affect most living beings below virtual god-level.

Given that the reward points were low—only 300 points—it was only natural that nobody was willing to take such a risk.

All three of the missions happened to be in the same area and they were not far away from the Iron Fist Shelter. Lin Huang selected them without hesitation.

Chapter 1259: The Simple Reserve Missions

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Less than an hour after deciding on his missions, Lin Huang arrived on Kraft Planet, the location of his intended target.

The entire planet seemed to reek of rot and decay. Murky raindrops fell from the gloomy sky. There were no plants to be seen, and faint traces of animal claw marks and snake trails were visible in the muddy soil.

“The stench in the air is terrible,” Lin Huang could not help frowning a little under his mask.

A moment later, a Bug Tribe army appeared in front of him.

The Bug Tribe army was made up of two pseudo-mythical-level Bug Servants and 20,000 imperial-level purple gold-rank Bug Tribe fighters.

“Both of you take 10,000 fighters each, head to the two respective Shelters on this planet and wipe them out. Bring me both of the guardians’ bodies and make sure they’re intact, then handle the rest of the carcasses yourselves. Don’t forget to look for loot while you’re at it.”

Both Bug Servants selected 10,000 fighters each and went their separate ways after the order was given.

Perhaps the massive tribes of the Boa Seal Shelter and Violet Rat Shelter intimidated other people; for Lin Huang, that proved no obstacle to his hunt.

No matter how many boas and rats there were, their numbers were child’s play compared to his Bug Tribe armies.

The Bug Tribe army produced by the four Bug Tribe Queen Mothers had exceeded 300 million from very early on. Not only that, the weakest Bug Tribe fighter was at imperial-level purple gold-rank in combat strength. Any random fighter sent into battle would be no less powerful than either of the guardians, Vine Boa or Lumi Rat.

Besides, apart from the Bug Tribe fighters, there were two pseudo-mythical-level Bug Servants and seven mythical-level bug beasts that were on the same level as the Queen Mothers.

Two Bug Servants and two 10,000 Bug Tribe armies were definitely sufficient to handle two grade-1 Shelters.

The reason the Shelters had to be wiped out was to prevent news spreading to Protoss about the appearance of the Bug Tribe, which would attract unnecessary trouble.

After the Bug Tribe armies had departed, Lin Huang activated Divine Telekinesis and was very soon able to observe the battle situation.

Within ten minutes of their departure, both Bug Tribe armies encountered hunting teams that were outside of the Shelters.

Both hunting teams comprised over ten elite members of their tribe. However, the poor things were killed almost as soon as they discovered the Bug Tribe armies. As for the Bug Tribe armies themselves, this did not slow them down at all as they advanced towards their targets.

A little over half an hour later, both of the Bug Tribe armies arrived at the Shelters they had been assigned to and commenced a one-sided massacre.

Although the members of both of the Shelters outnumbered the Bug Tribe armies by a hundredfold, the battle was one-sided, as was to be expected. Attacks from countless beasts and rats could not break the defenses that the Queen Mother had so painstakingly drilled into her troops.

Within ten minutes, both of the Shelters were completely wiped out. No lives were spared.

After leaving behind a small team to search for loot, both Bug Tribe armies separated into 100 individual small teams respectively to search for other hunting parties that might still be outside the Shelters.

The 200 Bug Tribe teams spent around two hours combing the entire planet and killing several hunting teams in the process. After making sure that there were no survivors, the Bug Tribe teams reformed their squadrons then returned to Lin Huang in a collective army along with all the beast carcasses and loot.

Lin Huang only collected the loot and both of the guardians’ bodies. The rest of the carcasses he gave to the army to bring back to the Queen Mothers as raw material.

Having successfully killed two birds with one stone, Lin Huang immediately headed to his second destination – the Misty Toxin Planet.

Just as its name suggested, the Misty Toxin Planet was a planet covered in poisonous mist.

The entire planet was shrouded in gray mist all year round. Powerhouses below virtual god-level and even imperial-level powerhouses were not immune to the lethal poisons that were to be found within the mist itself.

As Death Sickle only published this mission in the reserve members section and the reward points were a measly 300 points, it was perfectly natural that nobody was willing to take the risk.

Lin Huang had been willing to attempt this mission because it was close to the location of the previous two. Another reason was that since he had Divine Fire within his body, he was not afraid of the toxins on the planet.

However, the moment he set foot on the Misty Toxin Planet, Lin Huang found he could not take the stench of the poisonous mist.

“This toxic mist reeks a hundred times worse than the air on that other planet. It’s making me sick…”

He felt disgusted as soon as he inhaled, so he had to stop breathing and put his body into breath-circulation mode.

With his imperial-level combat strength, although he could not keep up this internal breathing mode indefinitely, he could maintain it for three to five days.

The mission for the Misty Toxin Planet was to kill a Poisonous Swamp Frog and retrieve its venom.

It did not take long for Lin Huang to locate the Poisonous Swamp Frog’s toxic swamp on the missions map. He summoned Thunder and set off for his destination at a furious gallop.

Thunder took less than two minutes to travel over 8,000 kilometers

and galloped faster than the local monsters on the Misty Toxin Planet could see with the naked eye. As a result, Lin Huang and Thunder encountered no obstacles along the way.

Lin Huang could not help frowning a little under his mask as they arrived above their destination—a bubbling purple-black swamp with steam rising from it. Before setting out, he had read from the mission details that most of the toxic gases on this planet came from the huge swamp currently below him.

The swamp covered close to a third of the entire planet. It was 500 million square kilometers, which was comparable to the earth’s entire surface area.

According to data records, there were less than 100 Poisonous Swamp Frogs in this entire swamp.

Apart from Poisonous Swamp Frogs, the swamp was also home to other monster species; at a count, these ran into tens of thousands. Taken altogether, the various monster tribes added up to at least billions in number.

Finding a Poisonous Swamp Frog in this swamp was definitely like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Fortunately, Lin Huang had a solution. He gestured with his hands and summoned Grimace.

“What the hell is this evil-smelling sh*tty place?!” Grimace complained the moment he materialized. Subsequently, he shut down his breathing system immediately.

“A toxic swamp on the Misty Toxic Planet in God Territory within the great world,” Lin Huang informed him before continuing, “I accepted a mission to find a Poisonous Swamp Frog…”

Lin Huang projected the Poisonous Swamp Frog’s likeness as he spoke, “Capture one for me, I don’t care if it’s alive or not.”

“In this swamp?” Grimace asked.

“That’s right.”

“How big is the swamp?” Grimace enquired again.

“Approximately 500 million square kilometers.”

“That’s not exactly easy,” Grimace smirked.

“A set of god relic flying daggers or a god relic puppet, take your pick.” Lin Huang knew that Grimace was looking to get some benefits for himself.

“I’ll go for the flying daggers then,” Grimace gave his answer after some consideration.

“Sure. Off with you now,” Lin Huang nodded without hesitation.

“Alright!” Grimace seemed to be in a good mood since he had managed to get what he wanted. He activated his God Territory directly, covering the maximum radius of 20,000 kilometers.

A moment later, all monsters within the Territory fell under an illusory spell.

Grimace turned his head and asked Lin Huang, “Is one enough? Do you want a few more?”

“No, one is fine.” Lin Huang did not expect Grimace to be so efficient.

Lin Huang had almost finished speaking when a gigantic silhouette suddenly thrashed out of the swamp.

Lin Huang scrutinized it closely. The Poisonous Swamp Frog was a gigantic frog monster five meters tall, weighing at least three tonnes. Its body, wreathed in toxic black mist, was bound by Grimace’s telekinetic thread. Yanked out from deep within the swamp, it hit the ground hard in front of Lin Huang and promptly fell unconscious.

Lin Huang did not hesitate as he used the telekinetic thread to pick up a flying dagger and slit open the Poisonous Swamp Frog’s chin. He retrieved its venom as if he had done it many times before…

Chapter 1260: The Top 10 Most Deceiving Mission (Black Sickle Version)

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Lin Huang had spent less than a day completing three fairly difficult reserve missions.

He headed straight to Death Sickle’s base in the Iron Fist Shelter as soon as he completed the missions, and handed both over both the beast carcasses and the Poisonous Swamp Frog venom.

The reception staff was a lady with hair that was permed into large, loose waves. She was rather surprised when she received the mission items.

“These three missions have been sitting there for ages. Nobody was willing to accept them, and we never expected that anyone would be able to complete them either,” the lady muttered softly as she processed the promotion paperwork for Lin Huang.

Very soon, the formalities were completed. The lady looked up at Lin Huang.

“It’s Xie Lin, am I right? I’ve submitted your mission results and proceeded with your promotion formalities. It usually takes around three minutes to update your level. If nothing changes after an hour, come back and we’ll handle that for you.”

Lin Huang headed straight back to the hotel after leaving Death Sickle’s base.

He clicked on Death Sickle’s official website and saw that his level had indeed been updated. It had been upgraded from the initial ‘reserve’ to ‘Black Sickle’ now. Apart from that, the default image changed from the word ‘reserve’ to a pair of crossed black sickles.

Not only that, there was a change in his access authorization too.

The previously locked trading and forum exchange sections were accessible now. The missions section no longer showed only the section for reserve members; there was a Black Sickle section as well. The message section now gave him access to Black Sickle level information.

Lin Huang could finally see Death Sickle’s Black Sickle, White Sickle, and Gold Sickle Leaderboards.

Apart from the code names used by Death Sickle members, the leaderboards recorded combat strength, the number of completed missions, the number of failed missions and total reward points.

“Code Name: Fallen Star”

“Combat Strength: Virtual God rank-9”

“Number of Completed Mission: 1361”

“Number of Failed Mission: 33

“Total Reward Points: 6071518”

…

“Code Name: Destiny”

“Combat Strength: Virtual God rank-9”

“Number of Completed Mission: 1368”

“Number of Failed Mission: 59”

“Total Reward Points: 5712623”

…

“Code Name: Twin”

“Combat Strength: Virtual God rank-9”

“Number of Completed Mission: 1281”

“Number of Failed Mission: 88”

“Total Reward Points: 5112513”

…

Almost all of the top 30 names on the Black Sickle Leaderboard were at Virtual God rank-9.

Lin Huang looked through the Black Sickle Leaderboard for a while before turning his attention to the White Sickle Leaderboard.

“Code Name: Virtuoso”

“Combat Strength: Seventh-rank True God”

“Number of Completed Mission: 768”

“Number of Failed Mission: 0”

“Total Reward Points: Access denied due to low authorization”

Lin Huang was shocked when he saw the details of the No.1 name, Virtuoso.

“His combat strength is only at the level of seventh-rank True God and he’s taken on very few missions, but he’s still on the top spot?!”

The person listed after Virtuoso was a ninth-rank True God who had completed 3,619 missions. Although he failed 78 missions, he was still ranked No.2. Clearly, the missions that Virtuoso took on were more difficult so the reward points had to be very high.

“He didn’t fail at any of those 700-over difficult missions?” Lin Huang’s attention was drawn to this particular point.

Obviously, this person with the codename Virtuoso was very powerful.

On the White Sickle Leaderboard, the person in the No.2 spot failed 78 missions while No.3 completed over 3,700 missions and failed 126 missions. The next person in line had over 200 failed missions.

It was obvious that White Sickle-level missions were not easy to complete.

After browsing the White Sickle Leaderboard for a while, Lin Huang proceeded to look at the higher-ranked Gold Sickle Leaderboard.

The person who ranked No.1 there was no other than Buried Heaven who was famous in the entire God Territory. Even Lin Huang, a recent arrival to the God Territory, had heard of him.

“Code Name: Buried Heaven”

“Combat Strength: Ninth-rank heavenly god-level”

“Number of Completed Mission: 5128”

“Number of Failed Mission: 13”

“Total Reward Points: Access denied due to low authorization”

…

After checking out Buried Heaven’s statistics, Lin Huang was convinced that Virtuoso, the top rank on the White Sickle Leaderboard, was a genius. Buried Heaven ranked No.1 on the Gold Sickle Leaderboard and had ninth-rank heavenly god-level combat strength—yet he had failed 13 missions.

Meanwhile, the people who ranked second and third after Buried Heaven had failed more than 50 missions.

After a general look through the three leaderboards, what impressed Lin Huang most was not the Gold Sickle Leaderboard, nor Buried Heaven who was ranked the most powerful. It was Virtuoso who ranked No.1 on the White Sickle Leaderboard.

Unfortunately, as a Black Sickle member, Lin Huang did not have the authorization to access details of White Sickle and Gold Sickle members.

Interest piqued, Lin Huang tried hunting for information on Virtuoso over the internet but found nothing. In contrast, information on Buried Heaven could be found easily; there were even many videos of him killing his targets.

Buried Heaven’s modus operandi was different from other assassins; one might even call him an anomaly. He never bothered with sneak attacks— in every assassination he appeared before his targets in full sight and made no attempt to disguise or hide his face. He would confront his targets directly, kill them, and leave.

He had also never prevented any spectators from recording his battles, nor did he care about the consequences that might ensue after his videos were posted on the internet.

As for the storm of mocking and teasing after the videos of his two failed missions went viral on the internet, he had never responded to any of it.

“This Buried Heaven is quite an interesting guy.”

After closing the page, Lin Huang reined in his curiosity and began to look through the forum’s message section.

Before beginning anything, the most important step was to retrieve information related to the task at hand. This was the advice that Bloody had given to Lin Huang.

As a result, Lin Huang thought he would check out the message section to see if he could find anything useful before he officially took on any missions.

Reserve members were denied access to the message section. It was Lin Huang’s first time checking it since his promotion to Black Sickle level.

Based on popularity, the top thread was one entitled ‘The Top 10 Most Deceptive Missions (Black Sickle Version)’.

Lin Huang could not help clicking on the thread after seeing the title.

“The No.1 Most Deceptive Mission:”

“Mission: Killing the Wine Ant Queen.”

“Target Information: Bug Tribe Wine Ant Queen, mythical-level, Virtual God rank-9 combat strength (might elevate to true god-level anytime). Has four pseudo-mythical-level bug guardians whose combat strength is also peak Virtual God rank-9. She has over a hundred million Ant Tribe fighters under her, all of them at virtual god-level. The Wine Ant Queen can produce up to 1,000 Ant Tribe fighters every minute when she has sufficient resources…”

“Mission Reward Points: 300,000 points (Excluding points for selling bug carcasses and pseudo-mythical-level bug guardians. Extra 10,000 points for each kill.)”

“Challenges of the Mission:

1. The Wine Ant Queen has at least a hundred million Ant Tribe fighters, all of which are at virtual god-level. Not only that, she does not stop producing Ant Tribe fighters along the way. Even a beginner-stage true god-level powerhouse would find it hard to go deep into the colony. As soon as one’s Divine Power is exhausted, a True God would die in the colony.

2. The four pseudo-mythical-level bug guardians are individually almost as strong as True Gods. Not only that, all of them have different abilities. Some are good in long-distance attacks, some excel at close-range combat, while others specialize in control and defense. The four bug guardians have been fighting together for years. When they join forces, even a second-rank True God might not be able to defeat them.

3. The Ant Queen is mythical-level herself. Her ability might be comparable to a first-rank True God were she to go into battle.

4. The star zone where the Wine Ant Queen resides is a battleground in itself. Apart from the Ant Queen, there are also other powerful Bug Tribes around.

…

Lin Huang was all fired up after reading the mission’s description, instead of being discouraged.

Perhaps to other Black Sickle members, this mission seemed impossible; it was practically going to one’s death even. Lin Huang, however, was not at all afraid of these sorts of Bug Tribes with a Queen Mother.

The numbers of the Ant Queen’s troops were merely numbers as long as their ability was below Nightmare Tapir.

The incredibly high 300,000 reward points were very tempting as well.

After all, for Black Sickle members, ordinary missions to kill Virtual Gods were only worth between 100 to 10,000 points. Only limited, difficult true god-level missions would have reward points over 10,000.

The 300,000 reward points awarded for killing the Wine Ant Queen were because the difficulty was much higher than assassinating ordinary beginner-stage True Gods.

If this mission was posted in the missions section for White Sickle members, most of the beginner-stage True Gods might be afraid to accept it; only medium-rank True Gods would dare to take the risk. After all, although True Gods had Divine Fire within their bodies, as soon as the drain on Divine Power surpassed the speed by which Divine Fire could produce Divine Power, one’s Divine Fire might be exhausted too.

This mission deserved to be called the No.1 Most Deceptive Mission.

After reading through the mission’s full description, Lin Huang considered it for a little, then proceeded to check out other missions on the leaderboard…