MONSTER PARADISE

1421 - 1440

“He summoned eleven more summoning beasts?!”

“All eleven of them are high-level Virtual Gods!”

“A few of them look like humans. They’re not Protosses, are they?!”

Everyone started chattering about it. They were quick to notice that Ku Rong, Bai, Grimace, Tyrant, Witch, and the others had appearances that were mostly similar to humans.

Based on the “knowledge” that they have, they immediately concluded that Bai and the others were Protosses.

In actuality, a Protoss had three forms and possessed a human form. However, not all that possessed a complete human form were Protosses.

Protoss was the general name for a group of several tribes who were jointly referred to by that name. Tribes that met the criteria and were willing to join the Protoss could be called a Protoss.

Even so, there were some tribes in the great world that possessed three forms and met all the criteria for joining the Protoss, but did not do so in favor of maintaining the independence of their tribes.

There were even a few tribes that had existed long before the establishment of the Protoss. Although they did not join the Protoss, even the most pure-blooded Protoss tribes would still pay extreme respect to them.

For example, the Observer Tribe, who had existed since the archaic epoch, also possessed complete human forms. No one knew if this was for the sake of convenience or for other reasons, but practically every Observer looked like a middle-aged man with a bald head. Even their facial features were all seventy to eighty percent similar. The only things that differentiated them were their heights and body shapes.

There was even a legend in the God Territory which claimed that a bald-headed human cultivator once accidentally arrived at the God Territory and received courteous reception due to being mistaken for an Observer.

However, the people in the gravel world did not know all this. Aside from Lin Huang and the Sword Servants, everyone that was present, including Mr. Fu, probably had never seen the real appearance of a Protoss. The news that a Protoss looked like a human was only passed around through hearsay.

On top of that, they did not know that most members of the two sword cultivator troops from Dynasty and Misery that were currently part of the battle formation to fight against the enemy alongside them were real Protosses. There were even two pure-blooded Protosses among them!

Lin Huang chose to ignore everyone’s comments.

“The eleven of you, guard one space tunnel each. Immediately kill anyone that gets teleported over. It doesn’t matter how many of them there are, spare none. If you notice any space rifts that are missing, repair them at once.”

Upon receiving the instructions, Ku Rong, Bai, and the others each promptly chose a space rift to guard.

The two waves of summoning beasts that were summoned by Lin Huang occupied twenty-one spots, and everyone present had no qualms about it.

This was not the time to fight for resources. Everyone did not have enough manpower, and the explorers would only increase in number and strength. The appearance of the summoning beasts relieved a big load of everyone’s burden, which was what everyone had hoped for.

The thirty-one contingents of troops swiftly assigned themselves to guard the remaining twelve space rifts.

However, Lin Huang furrowed his eyebrows slightly while looking at the twelve space rifts that were not guarded by the summoning beasts.

Among the thirty-one contingents of battle troops, three of them had Virtual God rank-4 cores, and the power of their battle formation was almost equivalent to virtual god-level rank-6. The remaining twenty-eight contingents had Virtual-God rank-3 cores, and their battle power was barely equivalent to Virtual God rank-5.

With such a deployment, if they were to face a virtual god-level rank-6 explorer, they would collapse on all fronts.

Lin Huang hesitated. Should he just summon the bug beasts to fill these twelve spots, or expose the Sword Servants’ strength?

The reason he was hesitant to summon the bug beasts was because a regular Imperial Censor had no way of controlling the Bug Tribe.

Bug Master might have been regarded as a subdivision of the Imperial Censor a long time ago, but had long become independent and developed a different professional system.

Under normal circumstances, no Imperial Censor would waste their time learning the Bug Master matters. They would rather utilize their time to find a few more imperial monsters to elevate their own strength.

Another less prominent reason was that people from not only the great world, but also the gravel world, had a very bad impression of the bug tribe. That was why the number of Bug Masters was much smaller than that of Imperial Censors.

Lin Huang was also deliberating on whether he should expose the Sword Servants’ strength.

After all, once the Sword Servants’ strength was exposed, it would definitely garner widespread attention, and it would be inevitable that certain people would notice the new virtual god-level sword cultivators in Misery. If they were to dig a little deeper, it would not be difficult for them to discover the relationship between Lin Huang and Misery.

If this was any other time, Lin Huang would not have cared too much even if such things were exposed.

However, this was a time of war, and Lin Huang did not want to arouse the suspicion of the Union Government, Hunter Association, and other forces at a time like this and cause disharmony within the Union Government army.

While Lin Huang was still deliberating if he should summon the bug beasts or expose the Sword Servants’ strength…

The eighth wave of invaders had arrived!

There were once again thirty-three space tunnels that simultaneously transmitted spatial fluctuations.

When Lin Huang sent forth his Divine Telekinesis to sense the number and strength levels of the invaders that came through the thirty-three space tunnels, he could not help frowning slightly.

The explorers that were teleported over this wave were Virtual God rank-5s, which was an upgrade compared to before. However, the bigger difference was that the number of explorers that were teleported through each of the thirty-three dimensional gateways increased from one to ten!

The second Lin Huang detected this, Mr. Fu also noticed the abnormality. His expression shifted slightly, and his figure immediately rose into the air and hung above the heads of the twelve groups of battle troops, ready to help at any time.

When he saw this, Lin Huang opened his mouth to stop him, but ended up not saying anything and let Mr. Fu go.

After seeing Mr. Fu taking action, the many Virtual Gods present gradually sensed the severity of the situation regarding this wave of invaders, and their faces turned pale.

Some of them also noticed that Lin Huang had been sitting still this whole time, looking like he did not have the slightest intention of making a move.

However, everyone had no objection to his behavior. After all, he had already dispatched twenty-one summoning beasts to join the battle. For an Imperial Censor, controlling such a large number of summoning beasts of such high caliber would tremendously drain them in all aspects.

Besides that, there had long been a tacit consensus among the people that those who were in the Imperial Censor profession had no real strength of their own, and they mainly relied on imperial monsters in battles. Therefore, on the battlefield, it was normal for an Imperial Censor to summon imperial monsters to join the frontlines of a battle while they themselves took a backseat.

Even for Guan Zhong and the others, who knew about Lin Huang’s strength, when they saw that he had not joined the battle, the thought that came to their minds was, ‘As expected, summoning twenty-one virtual god-level rank-9 imperial monsters at once is a bit too much even for Lin Huang.’

Of course, Lin Huang was unaware that he had unwittingly added a layer of drama in the minds of the others.

He was not even a real Imperial Censor. He relied on monster cards to summon imperial monsters, which did not cause even the slightest burden on him.

The reason he did not make a move himself was that he knew very well, even if the thirty-one battle troops from the gravel world were not there, Bai and the others were more than capable of coping with the arrival of the three hundred and thirty explorers!

Ku Rong stood in front of a space rift with his eyes half-lidded, as if he were completely ignoring the spatial fluctuations in front of him that kept on coming continuously. He was dressed in a white monk’s robe, his clothes fluttering in the wind caused by the spatial fluctuations, making him look like a celestial being.

The moment the invaders arrived, he suddenly opened his eyes.

Even without physically making a move, the bodies of the ten virtual god-level rank-5 monsters began to disintegrate inch by inch as soon as they were teleported over—not only their bodies but even their souls were rapidly being disintegrated in the same way.

In an instant, the ten explorers had been reduced to nothingness—not even a drop of blood remained.

Not far from Ku Rong, Bai was dressed in all black, his white hair wafting slightly in the wind.

He stared at the space rift, face devoid of emotion, expression unreadable.

After a moment, the spatial fluctuation quickly reached its peak, and ten silhouettes gradually revealed themselves

At this moment, Bai stretched a finger out to point in the air, and ten blood-colored electric arcs shot forth like living creatures. The next instant, the arcs plunged directly into the bodies of the newly-arrived ten monsters.

A second later, the bodies of the ten monsters began to shrivel up, and in just a few moments they became completely desiccated corpses. That was not all, though. After another half-a-second or so, the dried corpses began to disintegrate on their own, turning into dust in the sky.

Tyrant was much more direct than the others in his attacks.

As soon as the ten explorers were teleported over, he leaped forward and punched them one by one, pummeling all the monsters into a bloody pulp.

Charcoal, on the other hand, opened his wide mouth and spewed out his Dragon Flame, burning all the invaders into ashes that blew away in the wind.

Meanwhile, Warlord made no moves whatsoever. Before the explorers were teleported over, he placed a row of small artillery batteries in front of himself.

The moment the explorers arrived, blasts from about a dozen artillery batteries simultaneously sounded, and the blaze engulfed the ten invaders.

By the time the batteries ceased fire, the ten monsters were nothing more than ten lumps of pulverized meat, and it was impossible to tell what they had originally looked like.

Seeing that these few did not even have so much as their corpses remaining, Lin Huang could not help crying out in his heart, ‘What a waste!’

Lancelot, Killer, and the others were certainly far more conventional and used equally conventional killing methods. The only thing was that the speed of their kills was just a little faster and they eliminated their enemies within seconds.

That is, all but Grimace, who was the most ostentatious one of all in his methods.

The moment the ten invaders arrived, Grimace instantly took control of their bodies and steered them to walk into his own God Territory.

What happened after that, no one knew.

The twenty-one imperial monsters annihilated their enemies almost instantly.

However, it did not go so smoothly for the battle troops.

Even if they had the upper hand, only the three teams with Virtual God rank-4s as their cores were able to complete their kills. However, they were only able to kill two or three of the invaders.

Upon seeing this, Mr. Fu immediately took action.

However, at this moment, hundreds of scarlet electric arcs shot out almost simultaneously. Before Mr. Fu’s own attack could land, the arcs instantly penetrated the bodies of the remaining one hundred and twelve monsters.

Impressively enough, the person who attacked was Bai, who had already completed his mission.

Before this, when Lin Huang had asked them to help in bolstering attacks, Bai had already taken it upon himself to make this his second mission.

Therefore, after completing his first mission, he turned around, immediately locked onto all the remaining explorers, and brazenly made a move!

The scarlet arcs pierced into the bodies of the monsters in front of him like lightning bolts, and the creatures quickly shriveled into desiccated corpses at a speed visible to the naked eye, before finally disintegrating into fine dust all over the ground.

Seeing this, Mr. Fu withdrew from the attack in some embarrassment. He knew very well that his own move would definitely not have been as effective.

The numerous Virtual Gods who made up the battle formations were also dumbfounded when they saw the scene that unfolded before their eyes.

Such an attack really shocked them.

Just like that, the monsters which could not be defeated even by the battle formations that they had formed had all been summarily disposed of. This also gave everyone a new understanding of the strength of Lin Huang’s summoning beasts.

“That was likely more than a hundred Virtual God rank-5s, and they were all killed instantly! What kind of ability is this?!”

“I’ve said it before—that white-haired imperial monster looks exactly like a human, so he must be a Protoss! Do you all still have any doubts now?!”

“Say, could that white-haired individual be the strongest imperial monster under Lin Huang’s command? Or could there be an even stronger fellow?”

…

Just as everyone was debating hotly among themselves, another wave of reinforcements arrived.

This wave of reinforcements consisted of twenty or more people. Lin Huang saw a few familiar faces; those were the Sword Servants under his command.

The reason the Sword Servants were late was that most of them had never been to the Abyss Brink before, let alone pinpointed its coordinates.

They had no choice but to teleport themselves to the nearest location with a portal, and then either teleport again and again through a fixed dimensional portal or fly over here.

A few who were proficient in Space Rule could use it to rush over, but such individuals were few and far in between. This was why the Sword Servants had arrived later than the other reinforcements from the other major forces.

At this point, including the twenty or more Sword Servants that were present, more than two hundred and sixty Virtual Gods from the gravel world had been despatched.

Almost eighty percent of the Virtual Gods from the gravel world were now assembled on the entire third layer of the Abyss Brink.

Judging from the situation earlier, the initial small contingents of battle troops comprising seven or eight people were obviously not enough to cope with the next invasion.

Dongfang Bai had already begun discussions about the establishment of a stronger battle formation with the upper levels of various forces.

As the head of Dynasty, Lin Huang had naturally participated in the discussion, but he had not expressed any opinions throughout the entire process.

He was still deliberating whether or not he should summon the bug beasts or reveal the Sword Servants’ strength.

Dongfang Bai naturally noticed that Lin Huang seemed to be considering something, and could not help asking, “Emperor Lin, if you have any ideas, please do tell us.”

“I…” Just as Lin Huang was at a loss for words, a sudden stirring came from within his body. It was the Eternity Fire (Qi Muxiong’s Goldfinger) sending him a message—’I can provide spiritual energy to the God’s Figurines.’

The reason Lin Huang had not considered using the God’s Figurine’s Combat Souls before was that there were only ten of them within his body that he could use, while there were twelve space rifts. Although there were still many unused figurines, there was no way for him to use them, and others would not be able to unleash their power even if they used them.

However, now that the Eternity Fire had said so, he could summon two more God’s Figurines and completely block all the dimensional gateways.

“Leave the remaining twelve dimensional gateways to me. You can hone the battle formations and begin preparations for the start of the official war,” Lin Huang considered this for a while before deciding to say it openly.

Everyone was stunned by what they heard.

Mr. Fu was slightly worried. “Is it really okay?”

“It’s all good, I can handle it.” Lin Huang nodded, then summoned the ten God’s Figurine’s Combat Souls, including the Ninetails Lynx, as well as two other God’s Figurine that had been imbued with the spiritual energy of the Eternity Fire.

Under Lin Huang’s instructions, the twelve God’s Figurine’s Combat Souls quickly occupied the remaining twelve space rifts and became the new guardians.

The thirty-three space rifts were all guarded by Lin Huang’s summoning beasts and God’s Figurine’s Combat Souls, so the Virtual Gods from the gravel world were finally able to catch a break.

Many people looked upon Lin Huang with conflicting emotions; his abilities had completely exceeded the expectations of everyone present. They were all awestruck by how powerful Lin Huang was, yet at the same time, they feared him.

Everyone was aware that even if all the Virtual Gods of the entire gravel world were present, their defenses would have broken sooner or later. However, with Lin Huang here, the invaders from the great world would at least consistently fail in their explorations before the True Gods arrived.

Nevertheless, the thirty-three imperial monsters that Lin Huang summoned were also a great threat to everyone. He could slaughter all the Virtual Gods of the entire gravel world with a simple flip of his hand if he really wanted to. (Most of the people present did not know that the last twelve monsters Lin Huang had summoned were God’s Figurine’s Combat Souls, not summoning beasts.)

The Union Government was extremely conscious of Lin Huang’s unpredictability, not only because he was strong as an individual, but also because he had Dynasty—one of the six giants—backing him. As far as the Union Government was concerned, this was a great threat to them.

For more than eight hundred years, the Union Government had been the official representative of the entire gravel world, so they certainly did not want this position to be taken by another organization.

With this concern in mind, Dongfang Bai could not help directing a question at Lin Huang.

“Emperor Lin, if by luck we win this war, what do you plan to do next?”

The question attracted attention but not Lin Huang’s; rather, all the higher-ups of the other big organizations present pricked up their ears and awaited his answer.

Mr. Fu lofted a brow, glancing at Dongfang Bai with a measure of obvious dissatisfaction.

Dongfang Bai’s question might have seemed to be mere random small talk, but those with a discerning eye understood the real meaning behind his question.

“What do you mean, ‘if by luck we win’?” Lin Huang turned his head to look at Dongfang Bai. “In this war, we must win. There is no second choice!”

Everyone was stunned by Lin Huang’s words, but they quickly regained their senses. They all felt that Lin Huang was changing the topic of discussion and deliberately avoiding the question.

Just when Dongfang Bai was about to laugh it off and let the topic slide, Lin Huang spoke up again.

“If you’re asking about my personal plans after the war, I’m planning on taking Xin Er and the others to the great world with me. The gravel world no longer has the cultivation resources I need. However, this is my home. If we have time in the future, I’ll still bring Xin Er and the others back for a vacation, and meet up with old friends for a meal or a drink, or something along those lines.”

Of course, Lin Huang knew what Dongfang Bai was trying to ask, so he gave the answer that Dongfang Bai wanted to hear.

As a matter of fact, that was what he was planning to do anyway. In his current situation, it did not make much sense for him to remain in the gravel world. Only in the great world could his combat level be subsequently elevated.

Moreover, there was a high probability that Lin Xin would be able to directly break through to virtual god-level after her current closed-door cultivation. Once they arrived in the great world, she most likely would have some measure of ability to protect herself, however small.

Mr. Fu’s combat level had also reached rank-9. If he wanted to achieve another breakthrough and advance to true god-level, he could only do so in the great world.

As for the people of Dynasty and Misery, Lin Huang felt that if some of them wanted to depart with him, he would take them along. If not, he would let them stay and develop on their own.

After receiving a response like this from Lin Huang, Dongfang Bai finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He did not doubt Lin Huang’s words because he knew that the main purpose of Lin Huang’s trip to the great world a year and a half ago was to rapidly increase his abilities. Now that he had returned one and a half years later, there were genuinely no resources in the gravel world that were suitable for him to use in his cultivation.

Although Lin Huang’s answer satisfied the Union Government, Dongfang Bai still had to be courteous and offer up pleasantries.

“This is our hometown after all, and our family and friends are all here. If I do go to the great world one day, I myself might want to come back occasionally to meet up with friends and family.”

When the people around heard that Lin Huang was planning to leave, they all had mixed thoughts.

Some of them were considering whether or not they should go to the great world with Lin Huang.

After all, they were already Virtual Gods. In the gravel world, virtual god-level rank-4 was pretty much the limit. There would be no appropriate resources for them if they wanted to advance any further than that.

Many people had never traveled to the great world because previously there were too many others who had gone there and were never heard from again. Some of them even deliberately left their Soul Lamps and other such items behind before departing. The Soul Lamps had all been extinguished without exception, and this obviously meant that they had died. This was enough proof that going to the great world was an extremely dangerous undertaking.

Despite this, Lin Huang had not only gone to the great world, but he had even stayed there for a year and returned alive. This proved that he had a safe way of reaching the great world, which excited many people.

There were also some others who felt that Lin Huang’s departure would be the turning point for Dynasty to decline.

They felt that their own organizations might have the opportunity to take Dynasty’s position as one of the giants.

Everyone present had their own thoughts on the matter.

The space rifts soon started transmitting space fluctuations again.

The ninth wave of exploration began soon after.

This time, all thirty-three dimensional gateways opened at the same time.

The explorers’ combat levels had been upgraded once more, and their numbers had increased yet again!

All the explorers’ combat levels had been raised to virtual god-level rank-6, and their numbers had also increased to twenty per dimensional gateway!

If it had not been for Lin Huang bolstering the rifts with the God’s Figurine’s Combat Souls just in time, it was certain that the Virtual Gods of the gravel world would have suffered many casualties in this wave of attack.

Of the thirty-one contingents of battle troops that had been formed, twenty-eight of them were led by Virtual God rank-3s, and their strength was barely at virtual god-level rank-5. If they were to face off against groups of Virtual God rank-6s, the battle formations would be obliterated in an instant.

However, in the face of Bai and the other monsters, Virtual God rank-6s were nothing.

In the time it took to lift an arm, six hundred and sixty Virtual God rank-6s were all subdued in an instant, with not a single one remaining. The whole battle took no more than half a second from beginning to end.

All the Virtual Gods present could only gape at the scene that unfolded before them.

From what everyone could see, the invaders—who were stronger than themselves—were no more than sitting ducks in the face of Lin Huang’s summoning beasts. They were completely subdued without a single trace of resistance.

Even Mr. Fu felt slightly despondent.

He had not expected the group of little brats who had required his guidance back then to be far more powerful than himself right now. As a Virtual God rank-9, Mr. Fu felt that he had little chance of being victorious against any of the summoning beasts that were present.

“Apprentice, these summoning beasts of yours—they can’t have all been elevated to mythical-level, can they?”

Mr. Fu could not help asking through voice transmission.

“Most of them are class-4, but there’s also a class-4.5 and a class-5,” Lin Huang nodded in response.

“Class-4.5 and class-5?!” Mr. Fu gulped. This was the first time he had heard of these two concepts—he had always thought that class-4 mythical-level was the limit.

“Bai is at class-4.5 Pseudo-supreme God-level, and Ku Rong is at class-5 supreme god-level.” When he finished, Lin Huang was afraid that Mr. Fu would not know who Ku Rong was, so he added, “Ku Rong is the little monk wearing the white monk’s robe.”

‘There’s a supreme god-level?!’ Mr. Fu silently screamed internally, but there was no way he could let his apprentice discover that he himself did not know of the existence of levels beyond mythical-level. He stole a glance at Lin Huang, and when he saw no major reaction there, he nodded calmly. “The little monk does look really strong, but I didn’t expect him to be a class-5.”

Bai and the others easily dealt with the ninth wave of monsters, which finally enabled the Virtual Gods of the gravel world to see some part of Lin Huang’s true abilities.

This also stirred more people’s curiosity about the great world.

From what they could see, Lin Huang’s abilities had substantially increased after only a year in the great world, and he was practically unrivaled now he had returned to the gravel world.

Many people could not help but wonder if they would also experience such advancement if they made a trip to the great world.

However, what they did not know was that Lin Huang was able to achieve such a level of advancement primarily because he relied on conduits. With their beginner-stage virtual god-level combat powers, merely surviving in the great world for a year would be a problem.

After the ninth wave of monsters, two more waves of Sword Servants arrived at the Abyss Brink.

Guan Zhong’s brows creased slightly at the sight of dozens of unfamiliar faces with virtual god-level combat powers.

As the head of the Union Government’s Agency EA, he had within his grasp all intel and information on the entire gravel world. Even if it was impossible for the Union Government to gather data on all the Virtual Gods in the gravel world, at least 95% of all Virtual Gods had data records. However, there were no data records on any of the fifty or more people who comprised these two waves of reinforcements. Apart from them, there were about five or six people that he did not recognize even among the previous wave of reinforcements.

Even stranger was that these people seemed to know Lin Huang, and some of them even stepped forward to greet him.

With these doubts in mind, Guan Zhong turned his gaze to Dynasty’s camp. His eyes swept the area and he realized there were also nine people he did not recognize. He was quite sure that he had never seen any information in the database on these nine individuals.

After discovering this anomaly within Dynasty, Guan Zhong immediately informed Dongfang Bai about what he had found.

Dongfang Bai frowned after hearing that.

“How have you only just discovered this anomaly?”

“For one, Dynasty is an ally, so I did not pay much attention to the status of their camp. On the other hand, though, Lin Huang and Mr. Fu are over there and they can intercept my gaze easily, so I’m trying my best to avoid looking in that direction. I only glanced over briefly just now, and thought that there were only two or three unfamiliar faces who were Dynasty’s secretly-cultivated new recruits.”

“Do you think these unfamiliar Virtual Gods are Lin Huang’s subordinates?” Dongfang Bai asked.

“They might not necessarily be his subordinates, but there’s definitely a connection!” Guan Zhong pondered for a moment before continuing, “I even have my suspicions that these people may not be local residents of our gravel world!”

“Why do you say that?” Dongfang Bai asked, puzzled.

“I pretended to glance over there just now to observe, and the Emperor’s Heart Rings on these people’s hands are all black market goods. Most people may not be able to see the difference, but after doing intelligence work for so long, I can tell the difference between a black market item and a regular Emperor’s Heart Ring with just a glance.”

“So these people’s identities are fake?!” Dongfang Bai’s eyes widened slightly, and he turned to look in Lin Huang’s direction.

At this moment, Lin Huang also seemed to sense Dongfang Bai’s gaze and looked toward him.

When their eyes met, Dongfang Bai smiled and nodded at Lin Huang, then immediately looked away.

Lin Huang raised an eyebrow. “What an odd fellow.”

“Why don’t we take the initiative and just ask Lin Huang where these people are from?” Guan Zhong asked.

“Do you think he’ll tell the truth if he were really hiding some secret scheme?” Dongfang Bai shook his head.

“Then, what should we do now? There’s no conclusive evidence to prove that there’s something amiss with these people, so should we report it?” Guan Zhong asked again.

“Mention this to Old Jiang. Just tell him about your suspicions and see what he says.” Dongfang Bai contemplated for a while before deciding to just push this problem to Chief Jiang Shan.

Guan Zhong nodded. After returning to the tent, he immediately contacted Jiang Shan and told him about all the things that he found odd.

After hearing this, Jiang Shan pondered for a moment.

“I’ll sort this matter out.”

Just when the tenth wave of monsters arrived, Mr. Fu’s communicator suddenly rang. He opened the communication page and discovered that the caller was Chief Jiang Shan from the Union Government.

After a moment of confusion, he connected the video request.

“What’s the matter, Xiaojiang?”

“Old Fu, I heard from Guan Zhong that there are many unfamiliar Virtual Gods who have appeared at the Abyssal Brink, and they seem to know Lin Huang. Do you know anything about this matter, sir?”

“Yes, I’m aware of this. These are reinforcements that Lin Huang brought back from the great world; there are more than two hundred of them in total.” Mr. Fu nodded; he had expected the Union Government to ask about this sooner or later.

“Over two hundred of them, and they’re all Virtual Gods?!” Jiang Shan was dumbfounded. Based on what he had heard from Guan Zhong just now, there were only around seventy unfamiliar faces.

“They’re all True Gods,” Mr. Fu corrected.

“Huh?” Jiang Shan thought he had misheard. “They’re all True Gods?!”

“Yes, there are more than two hundred of them and they’re all True Gods,” Mr. Fu confirmed once again.

Jiang Shan could only gape in shock, at a loss for words.

If Lin Huang had brought back more than two hundred Virtual God powerhouses, he might have suspected that Lin Huang was planning to overthrow the Union Government, or even get rid of the other top organizations, so that Dynasty would be the reigning monopoly.

However, since the individuals that Lin Huang had brought back were all True Gods, conversely, he did not harbor any such suspicions. This was because if Lin Huang really had wanted to make Dynasty the top organization, bringing back two True Gods would have been enough to eliminate all other organizations in the entire gravel world. There was no need for him to expend so much effort to bring back more than two hundred True Gods just for that.

“These True Gods… can we trust them?” Jiang Shan enquired after collecting his thoughts. “Could some organization from the great world be using Lin Huang to infiltrate our world…”

“These people are Lin Huang’s subordinates and they obey his every order. Also, according to what I’ve observed, there really is no problem,” Mr. Fu revealed another piece of information, which both he and Lin Huang had previously agreed they could disclose.

He and Lin Huang had already expected the Sword Servants to be noticed sooner or later. Lin Huang had no intention of concealing the identity of the Sword Servants anyway. If they were reinforcements that he had borrowed from an organization from the great world, the other organizations would always have worries in their hearts. However, if these were Lin Huang’s own subordinates, then everyone’s concerns would be reduced. At least Lin Huang himself was a local resident, and no one would want their own home to be destroyed or occupied.

“Can I have a few more words with Lin Huang?”

“No problem.” Mr. Fu turned the projection toward Lin Huang who was not far away.

“Lin Huang, are these people really trustworthy?” Jiang Shan asked him outright.

“They’re my people, so there won’t be any problem.” Lin Huang nodded.

“Then, I’ll ask you one last question. I hope you can answer me truthfully.” Jiang Shan’s expression was serious; after a moment of silence, he stared into Lin Huang’s eyes and asked, “Can I trust you?”

Lin Huang nodded slightly. “You can relax and trust me. This is also my home, so like all of you, I don’t want the peace of the gravel world to be destroyed.

“I only have two purposes in coming back this time. One is to resolve the crisis in the gravel world. The other is to bring my close friends and family with me when I go.

“There’s one other thing that you can rest assured about. I don’t have any plans regarding this world. Even though there have been quite a few problems in the development of the Union Government over the past eight hundred years, on the whole, the Union Government has done all that they could. If I were to become chief of the Union Government, I would certainly not be able to do what has already been achieved up until now.

“If I were to lead an organization, I might still be able to pull that off fairly well. However, if I were to become the ruler of a world, I’m very much aware that I wouldn’t be able to do it competently. In your position, you have too many things to worry about—not just matters concerning cultivators, but you also have to take into account the countless ordinary citizens…

“For myself, I want to focus more on my own development. I like exploring the unknown and I enjoy feeling myself becoming stronger as well as the excitement that every battle brings…

“I don’t believe that the great world is my final destination either. I want to go to an even more vast universe beyond the great world…”

After ending the call with Lin Huang, Jiang Shan was silent for a long while.

When he was young, he had also considered that if one day he were to become a Virtual God, he must go to the great world to see what the vast world beyond looked like.

However, as time went on and his own cultivation level increased, he also rose through the ranks of the Union Government and had to gradually let go of his dream.

He even thought that he would never think about it again.

However, his conversation with Lin Huang today reminded him of his dream from long ago.

“I’ve reached virtual god-level now, but I haven’t been able to visit the great world…” Jiang Shan said to himself with a wry smile.

He definitely knew for a fact that Lin Huang not having plans regarding the gravel world was true.

To Lin Huang, the gravel world was too small a stage—his arena lay in the vast sea of dazzling stars beyond!

After a while, Jiang Shan dialed Dongfang Bai’s number and briefly explained the conclusion of his conversation with Lin Huang.

Dongfang Bai and Guan Zhong were speechless after hearing what he had to say.

“Old Jiang, are you sure he said that more than two hundred of those reinforcements are True Gods?!”

“Mr. Fu was the one who said it, so it shouldn’t be anything false.” Jiang Shan nodded.

Dongfang Bai pondered for a moment before asking again, “Do you think we can trust Lin Huang?”

Jiang Shan nodded with barely any hesitation.

“I don’t think Lin Huang will be much of a problem. On the one hand, he’s a native resident of our gravel world, and he won’t want his birthplace to become someone else’s enslaved territory. On the other hand, he doesn’t seem to have any great desire for status or power. If he really wanted to take control of the gravel world, with his current overall abilities he could have done so without expending much effort. The third point is that he’s only twenty years old—his desire to explore is still at its peak, and for him, the gravel world is too small.”

After listening to this, Dongfang Bai was silent for a moment before he nodded. “I understand. How should we deal with the matter after this, then? Do we act as if it never happened?”

“We’ll just treat it as if it never happened.” Jiang Shan nodded. “Also, regarding the information about the reinforcements—it’s enough for the three of us to know about it. There’s no need to tell a fourth party. The more people who know about this, the more likely that other problems will arise, and some people may take this as an opportunity to stir up trouble. With our current situation, unity within the gravel world is still very important.”

“I understand,” Dongfang Bai agreed.

“How’s the situation over at the Abyss Brink?” Jiang Shan enquired after they were done talking about matters regarding Lin Huang.

Dongfang Bai’s face betrayed a slightly embarrassed expression upon hearing this question.

“As of right now, ten waves of invaders have tried to come through. The tenth wave has seen the arrival of thirty-three squads of explorers with thirty members each, and their combat level has been upgraded to virtual god-level rank-7…”

Jiang Shan’s expression became increasingly grave upon hearing this.

“However, the current guardians of the thirty-three space rifts are all Lin Huang’s summoning beasts, and they’re all virtual god-level rank-9.” This was what Dongfang Bai was embarrassed about. There were more than two hundred of his people, and they had all been reduced to mere bystanders.

“Virtual god-level rank-9… it doesn’t seem like they’ll last for much longer, though.” The expression on Jiang Shan’s face did not relax at all. “How are the pre-war preparations going?”

“The preparations have been completed,” Dongfang Bai replied.

“That’s good.” Jiang Shan nodded. “That trump card… it’s better to not use it unless we’re at the most critical moment.”

“Understood.” Dongfang Bai nodded.

…

Back at Dynasty’s camp, after hanging up the call with Jiang Shan, Mr. Fu could not help asking Lin Huang a question.

“Do you really plan on taking Xin Er away from the gravel world after the war?”

“I’ll probably rest for a month or two before leaving.” Lin Huang nodded. “We must make arrangements for Dynasty and Misery’s follow-up development plans.

“Besides, there are still many areas in this world that we haven’t been to yet, and Xin Er might still have places she wants to visit. Before leaving, we should go to the places we want to visit and try not to leave behind any regrets since I don’t know when we’ll be able to come back next time.

“Teacher, you should come with us. Go to the great world and take a look!” Lin Huang suddenly changed the topic and said excitedly to Mr. Fu.

Mr. Fu hesitated; he did not refuse, but he did not agree either.

“On our side here in the gravel world, as long as we get rid of the leader of the invaders, such invasions shouldn’t occur in the future. After all, the location of the entrance to the dimension-bridging tunnel that connects the great world and the gravel world is very remote, and it’s normally not so easily discovered.

“Not only that, but it also ought to be fairly unlikely for civil war to break out within the gravel world for a while after this great war. As long as the six giant organizations can find a balance, they should be able to maintain peace for a considerable amount of time.

“Besides, I think you should also think about yourself, Teacher. You can’t protect the gravel world for the rest of your life. The future of this world should be left in the hands of its future generation.

“You’ve now fully recovered from your injury, and your combat level has reached virtual god-level rank-9. There’s no longer any way for you to advance your abilities in the gravel world. However, in the great world, not only can you advance to become a True God, but it’s also not out of the question for you to break through to heavenly god-level! If you ever want to return to the gravel world, you can seal your combat strength and still come back.”

Mr. Fu was obviously swayed when he heard this.

“I’ll consider your suggestion properly when the war is won. However, for now, let’s put our focus on this war.

“Oh yes, under normal circumstances, if the invaders have been trying to test the dimensional gateways without success, will they keep delaying the start of the war? Is it possible that they might give up on the invasion?” Mr. Fu voiced his doubts.

“If it were a newly-opened space tunnel and the teleportation testing failed repeatedly, then the invaders would probably temporarily abandon the invasion.

“However, these thirty-three tunnels of the Abyss Brink have existed for a long time, and there have previously been many successful cases of teleportation. In terms of probability, even if there was a problem with the dimensional gateways, it’s impossible for problems to occur in all of them. The invaders from the great world will certainly know that the reason for the teleportation failures is because someone on our side intercepted and killed the explorers. Therefore, they won’t give up on the invasion.

“They also won’t keep delaying the start of the war. They’re testing like this now only because the suppression of the world will in the gravel world has not achieved results yet. Once the world will is completely suppressed, they’ll immediately go to war without hesitation.”

“But they don’t know which dimensional gateway is functional. Won’t they suffer a great loss if they go to war under such circumstances?” Mr. Fu asked doubtfully.

“They’ll send a large number of beginner and intermediate-level Virtual Gods to pave the way, and they won’t be testing with just a few dozen of them like they are now. They’ll send tens of thousands of them through each gateway. Once they find a dimensional gateway that they suspect is functional, they’ll send over a large number of high-level Virtual Gods for a further second round of exploration. After the two waves of cannon fodder have done their explorations, the True Gods will enter in multitudes; after that, they’ll officially arrive with an army and eradicate the entire gravel world…”

“High-level Virtual Gods are only mere cannon fodder?” Mr. Fu was having a hard time comprehending what he had just heard.

“In the great world, virtual god-level is just the starting point for cultivation. There are many powerful tribes in the great world whose children are virtual god-level at birth and by the time they grow up, they automatically advance to become True Gods. For some top tribes, some of their newborn babies may even be born as True Gods, and they automatically advance to heavenly god-level once they reach maturity.

“Furthermore, the great world is connected to countless mini-worlds, and the resources available there are more than a million times that of an average mini-world. Their rules and sequences are complete, various types of energy exist in abundance, and cultivation is much easier. Becoming a Virtual God there is a hundred times easier than in the gravel world. The number of Virtual Gods in the great world is more than the number of all the transcendents in the gravel world combined, so naturally, they can only be reduced to cannon fodder.”

The eleventh wave of invaders arrived. Their combat level was already at Virtual God rank-8 although their numbers remained at thirty for each tunnel.

It was also in this wave that the other summoning beasts began to reach the limits of their capabilities, except for Ku Rong, Bai, and Grimace.

With their combat levels suppressed at Virtual God rank-9, it was not a problem for Charcoal and Tyrant to eliminate thirty Virtual God rank-8 monsters. However, it was slightly harder for them to execute instant kills since their combat levels differed merely by a rank.

In dealing with this wave of invaders, the overall killing speed of the summoning beasts slowed down significantly. In the previous wave, Lancelot and the rest eliminated their opponents in less than two seconds. However, in this wave, Lin Huang knew at a glance that it would take them at least seven seconds or more to kill their opponents.

Mr. Fu and many Sword Servants who were present at the scene also noticed the anomaly.

Mr. Fu’s brows furrowed slightly. He knew that his abilities were slightly inferior to Lancelot and the others; even if he joined in the fight, he would not be able to greatly alter the outcome.

“Lord Swordmaster, do you want us to make a move?” Sword101 asked, snapping his head around to glance at Lin Huang.

“No need for that.” The moment Lin Huang’s words escaped his mouth, around a dozen scarlet gleams of light shot out from his sleeves like lightning.

They were the telekinetic weapons that had evolved from the God Weapon not so long ago. Their level was akin to a god rule relic.

In truth, the God Weapon was not concealed in Lin Huang’s sleeves but within his inner world instead. Lin Huang had just gotten used to unleashing his telekinetic flying daggers from his sleeves.

The red gleams sliced across the sky like lightning and hurtled into the area of battle where Bai and the rest were. Before anyone could react, the red gleams pierced through the invaders’ bodies one after the other like small, slithering scarlet snakes.

In less than half a second, nearly half of those close to a thousand Virtual God rank-8 monsters were disposed of, leaving less than a hundred for Lancelot and the rest to continue practicing on.

After the red gleams had shot out and killed their targets, they shot back and disappeared into the depths of Lin Huang’s sleeves.

Although all of this happened in a flash, the crowd of Virtual Gods saw everything.

“Was that Lin Huang who just made a move?!”

“Those dozens of red gleams should be telekinetic flying daggers!”

“Isn’t he a Virtual God rank-3? How did he manage to kill off so many Virtual God rank-8s so easily in a matter of seconds? We’re not talking about one or two invaders; we’re talking about nearly a thousand of them!”

…

For most people present at the scene, this was the first time that they had seen Lin Huang in action. When they saw what unfolded, they were utterly astounded.

Even though Dongfang Bai, Guan Zhong, and everyone else from the Union Government had already had anticipated Lin Huang’s abilities, the expressions on their faces showed only disbelief.

“I always thought that Lin Huang’s power was due to his strong summoning beasts. I never expected that his own abilities would be this terrifying.

“Now that I think back on it carefully, his details actually seem to have mentioned that he is a psychic as well. But I never expected his telekinesis to be this powerful,” Dong Fangbai could not help lamenting, “To be able to pierce through the bodies of dozens of Virtual God rank-8s… I believe that his set of telekinetic weapons is on par with a god rule relic, at least.”

“His abilities have grown far too powerful in the past two years.” Guan Zhong’s expression appeared rather convoluted. When he was spying on the Wei family two years ago, Guan Zhong had already witnessed Lin Huang’s strength. The current Lin Huang was goodness knows how much stronger compared to what he had been in the past.

However, the stronger Lin Huang’s real abilities were, the less worried the Union Government was about him. The stronger he was, the less space he would have for advancement in the gravel world.

…

Nevertheless, everyone did not know that Lin Huang’s attack this time was far from an actual display of his true abilities.

Lin Huang did not compound these flying daggers with any rule powers, elemental enlightenments, or Sword Dao true meaning. Neither did he activate the flying daggers’ innate rule power, nor even imbue them with Divine Power. The only thing Lin Huang used was the power of a Virtual God rank-9’s Divine Power to manipulate the flying daggers, and his attack was completed with ease. He depended mostly on the kinetic energy produced from his mastery of telekinesis, as well as the flying daggers’ innate sharpness and durability.

However, even an attack as simple as that was sufficient to astound all the Virtual Gods who were present.

Mr. Fu vaguely managed to guess that Lin Huang had yet to go all out but he was not sure what percentage of real strength Lin Huang had utilized.

Only the Sword Servants and Lin Huang’s imperial monsters knew that Lin Huang had yet to lift even a finger.

Lin Huang’s demonstration was just the tip of the iceberg, but it was sufficient to impress everyone there.

Those who initially thought Lin Huang had ascended to his position only because of his summoning beasts now realized that this Emperor from Dynasty had grown far more powerful than they had ever imagined.

The crowd began surreptitiously discussing heatedly among themselves as they tried to guess how powerful Lin Huang’s real abilities were.

Meanwhile, after recalling his flying daggers, Lin Huang remained seated on the spot with an expressionless face. He closed his eyes and continued his rejuvenation as though nothing had happened.

Before the intrusion of the twelfth wave of invaders, the Abyss Brink saw the arrival of yet another two waves of reinforcements. Most of them were Sword Servants. Taken together, both waves added up to a total of fifty-six Sword Servants.

In addition to the seventy over Sword Servants who were already in the Abyss Brink, the total number of Sword Servants present had now reached a hundred and thirty-three individuals. This meant nearly half the full contingent of Sword Servants were already present in the Abyss Brink.

In truth, other than the Union Government’s camp, other camps started to notice the existence of this group of strangers too.

Despite not having a databank as complete as that of the Union Government, most top-notch organizations had their own intelligence systems and therefore had access to the information on most Virtual Gods. Moreover, there were not many Virtual Gods in the gravel world to begin with, so they were bound to encounter each other much of the time.

However, these Sword Servants had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. They did not just have unfamiliar faces, they had never interacted with the other Virtual Gods before. If it had merely been a few dozen unfamiliar faces, nobody would think too much of it. Yet, the most crucial point was that the number of people from the Sword Alliance’s camp had exceeded one hundred. The total number of Virtual Gods in the entire Abyss Brink only came up to three hundred and seventy-one people and those from the Sword Alliance’s single camp alone were already one-third of that number.

It must be noted that even for the Mystic Butterflies who specialized in collecting intelligence, the Virtual Gods who had data records in their intelligence network numbered only three hundred and sixty-one individuals. (There were not as many Virtual Gods before Lin Huang’s departure. Nearly half of these were Demigods who had elevated to Virtual Gods in the past year, all thanks to Mr. Fu.) Virtual Gods whose data records were stored in the Union Government’s Agency EA were even fewer—only three hundred and fifty-three. The data collected by other top organizations was even less—their records averaged around only three hundred Virtual Gods.

However, the addition of one hundred and thirty-three Sword Servants increased the number of Virtual Gods present in the Abyss Brink to three hundred and seventy-one. This surpassed all the numbers in all the organizations’ records.

Excluding the nineteen Sword Servants from Dynasty and Misery, fully one hundred and fourteen Sword Servants had gathered under the banner of the Sword Alliance.

Seeing more than a hundred unfamiliar Virtual Gods congregating in an unfamiliar camp, everyone’s minds were full of uncertainty. The current number of Virtual Gods present was almost more than all the Virtual Gods in the Union Government and the Hunter Association combined.

Curiosity got the better of some organizations and they attempted to acquire more information on this peculiar occurrence. The only information they managed to obtain was that this group of people belonged to a new organization named the Sword Alliance. Other than that, they had no luck finding out anything else.

Noticing the lack of response from the people of the Union Government while Dongfang Bai and the rest seemed unfazed, many people assumed that the Sword Alliance was related to the Union Government, or even that the Sword Alliance was a secret organization formed by the Union Government.

A small number of people noticed that individuals from the Sword Alliance greeted Lin Huang as well, leading them to guess that the Sword Alliance might be connected to him.

The crowd murmured among themselves in a heated discussion.

Somebody even let his imagination run wild and joked that perhaps these were reinforcements that Lin Huang had summoned over from the great world. Yet, nobody knew that this joke of his was the closest thing to the truth.

The great world, in the Undead Dimension.

A sumptuous golden chair floated in midair, its backrest and armrests covered in esoteric snake-like patterns. On the highest point of the backrest were carved two triangular-headed venomous king cobras, mouths wide open to reveal their poisonous fangs.

Seated cross-legged on this chair was a golden-haired man. He had just stopped shaking his crossed legs and the expression on his face was rather unpleasant to look upon.

“Sect Leader sir, the last wave failed to teleport through the dimensional gateways in all thirty-five portals again,” a snake-headed, white-robed individual said in human language as he flicked his snaky tongue.1

“Is it possible that the space tunnels malfunctioned?” A long-legged young lady standing to one side blurted out. She seemed to be around seventeen or eighteen years old. At first glance, her appearance did not differ much from that of a human being. However, a close look would reveal that her eyes had reptilian vertical slit-pupils.

“That’s impossible. Even if there is any form of malfunction in the space tunnels, it’s out of the question that all thirty-five portals have developed problems,” the golden-haired man disagreed.

“But the gravel world rules aren’t complete at all! It’s already so insanely difficult to level up to Virtual God that it’s impossible for anyone to advance to True God. If the space tunnels aren’t the cause of the problem, how did they manage to kill off so many high-level Virtual Gods instantly?” The long-legged young lady asked, “Moreover, four months ago they had only just triggered the alert for reaching 300 Virtual Gods—but the alert hasn’t indicated that anyone has elevated to True God status.”

“You’re thinking only of native cultivators; they are definitely incapable of coping with our countless probes. But what if they got an outsider to help out?” The man lifted his golden head to look at the young lady next to him. “The internal Space Rules in all thirty-five dimensional gateway portals have long since been consolidated and stabilized. This isn’t something that True Gods can ruin through human agency. Even if special conditions arose and caused damage, it’s impossible that all thirty-five portals can malfunction simultaneously.

“Having weighed both alternatives, I think it’s more likely that there is a powerhouse who is obstructing us by killing off our people who try to set foot there!” The golden-haired man declared with absolute certainty.

“But our scouts have all been upgraded to Virtual God rank-8 standard, and they still haven’t been able to find out anything at all. If this continues, we’ll have to send the Virtual God rank-9s and we only have about three hundred or so of them left in total,” continued the young lady, “What do you plan to do for the next wave? Send all the Virtual God rank-9s to smash their way in?!”

“If there really is someone who’s killing them off, they managed to annihilate nearly one thousand Virtual God rank-8s. Instantly eliminating three hundred Virtual God rank-9s shouldn’t be too hard,” the snake-headed man beside them added.

The golden-haired man contemplated in silence for a while. “Assign one hundred high-level Virtual Gods and three hundred intermediate-stage Virtual Gods to every gateway. In addition, divide one hundred Virtual God rank-9s into ten squads and send them to ten random tunnels.”

“If it’s a problem with the space tunnels, it would have seemed like you’ve arranged for half of our Virtual Gods to go to their deaths.” The long-legged young lady still thought that the rounds of testing mandated by the golden-haired man were too radical for her liking.

“Currently, the world will in the gravel world hasn’t been completely suppressed. Unless you would rather I send True Gods to explore the ways?” retorted the golden-haired man.

The young lady was suddenly bereft of words to retort.

There were around thirty True Gods present right now. If they intended to enter the gravel world while the world will was still whole, they had no choice but to seal their combat strength at virtual god-level. Under such circumstances, it would be like serving them up on a silver platter.

“What if we’re still keeling over after this wave?” asked the long-legged young lady after a momentary silence.

The golden-haired man set down his crossed legs and fell into a prolonged silence. “We’ll deal with that later.”

…

In the gravel world, the twelfth wave of the monster invasion was more than ten minutes later than the previous one.

Just as everyone in the gravel world thought that the great world would give up on the invasion and prepared to rejoice silently, spatial fluctuations in all thirty-three portals occurred simultaneously.

As guardians, Bai and his team increased their focus to one hundred and twenty percent as they concentrated on the dimensional gateway, ready to make a move.

Despite knowing that this wave of explorers would only be stronger than the one before, none of them harbored any notions of retreat.

As the incoming spatial fluctuations were detected, everyone present at the scene dropped everything they were doing and focused their attention. Even the unending murmur of surreptitious discussion vanished entirely.

Everyone knew that this wave was the key.

Even Mr. Fu found it difficult to remain in his seat. If Lin Huang had not stopped him from doing so, Mr. Fu would have joined in the fight.

Lin Huang was the only one who remained seated on his reclining chair. He did not stand up but neither did he continue his meditation. His eyes were now wide open as they stared in the direction of the space tunnel not so far away.

A moment later, the twelfth wave of monsters finally arrived.

Lin Huang scanned the area with his Divine Telekinesis and felt rather surprised. He initially thought that this wave would be completely made up of Virtual God rank-9s but he had not expected this hodgepodge of monsters consisting of intermediate-stage and high-level Virtual Gods as well. Together with the Virtual God rank-9s, this made up a total of one hundred individuals.

‘What’s the meaning of this silver platter of a wave? Did they run out of Virtual God rank-9s?’

While Lin Huang made this silent jeering comment in his mind, he shook his sleeve and multiple scarlet gleams shot out.

This time, the number of telekinetic flying daggers that he propelled forth was more than the last round—fully three hundred over daggers since the explorers who had arrived this time were far more numerous.

Scarlet telekinetic daggers shot out one after the other as though hundreds of blood-red lightning bolts were raining down. In a flash, the entire battlefield was covered with them.

Not a single entrance from all thirty-three dimensional gateways was left out.

The blood-red gleams pierced through the bodies of the intruders in the blink of an eye. Not only did the daggers eliminate the invaders’ physical bodies, but they also shattered the invaders’ souls.

It did not matter if the invaders were undying species or spirit types—once the flying daggers pierced through their bodies, they died an absolute death.

In less than half a second, Lin Huang’s telekinetic flying daggers disposed of tens of thousands of invaders, leaving only the dozen or so who were fighting the imperial monsters.

Another two seconds or so later, Bai, Lancelot, and the rest of them managed to eliminate their own enemies, completing the total annihilation of the invading force.

With that, the twelfth wave of invading explorers from the great world was proclaimed a failure yet again!

…

Upon seeing the end results of the invasion attempt, the thirty over True Gods, as well as the golden-haired man, lapsed into silence.

“How about we file a report on this situation then?” After a protracted silence, the snake-headed man finally could not help voicing out his suggestion.

“Ever since this mission was assigned to the Thousand Snake Sect, there have never been any slip-ups. My grandfather and great-grandfather personally carried out the same mission and destroyed the cultivation civilization in the gravel world with their own hands. Do you think I am going to file a report now that it’s my turn?!”

Noticing the hostility in the golden-haired man’s words, the snake-headed man lowered his head and did not dare say another word.

“No matter how much they resist or struggle, ants will be ants.” The golden-haired man’s murderous intent was boiling over. “Once our suppression measures come into effect, we’ll begin arriving officially!”

“But we still haven’t managed to find out which spatial dimensional gateway—” The long-legged young lady’s words were interrupted by a glare from the golden-haired man.

“No buts! I’ve made my decision!”

The third layer of the Abyss Brink.

Dongfang Bai led Guan Zhong and a few others to Dynasty’s site and headed straight for Lin Huang to ask him a question.

“There haven’t been any signs of movement in the dimensional gateways for over an hour now. Is it possible that the invaders have given up?”

Lin Huang shifted his gaze to Dongfang Bai and ignored the faint look of expectation on Dongfang Bai’s face.

“The lack of movement is probably because they’ve lost too many Virtual Gods. They’re also aware that their current mode of exploration is fruitless and have abandoned further attempts at it. However, that doesn’t mean they will give up on their invasion. I’m guessing they’re waiting for the world will to be completely suppressed before sending in their main army!”

Dongfang Bai was still somewhat reluctant to give up after hearing Lin Huang’s words.

“What you mean to say is that despite being unable to determine which of the dimensional gateways is functional, they will still persist in the invasion?”

“Based on my understanding of the invaders, yes.” Lin Huang nodded.

“Aren’t they afraid that all the dimensional gateways are problematic?” Guan Zhong could not help furrowing his brows and asking.

“Number one, the probability of all thirty-three dimensional gateways malfunctioning is extremely low. Number two, when their main army arrives, it will also be a chance for exploration. As long as they teleport enough people over and we can’t kill them in time, they will be able to determine which dimensional gateways are usable. Only then will the True Gods arrive.

“So, as long as we massacre their main forces fast enough, their True Gods won’t arrive! That’ll remove all risks of getting invaded by True Gods!” Dongfang Bai’s eyes shone after hearing Lin Huang’s words.

Lin Huang peered sidelong at Dongfang Bai and shook his head helplessly. “It’s not as easy as you think.

“If their True Gods don’t arrive and they give up on this invasion, after a while they will gather more Virtual Gods to form their main army a second time. When that happens, the invaders will only be stronger and far more numerous.

“However, if their True Gods arrive all at once, we’ll be dealing with less trouble in the future.”

The individuals from the Union Government suddenly developed convoluted expressions once again.

Naturally, they did not wish for the True Gods to arrive. As cultivators in the gravel world who were unable to elevate to True Gods, in their minds they held True Gods in reverence.

However, they also knew that what Lin Huang said was true. If the invasion failed, there would always be the possibility of their enemies trying again—moreover, when that happened, their enemies would be even more prepared.

If they managed to eliminate all of their enemies in one fell swoop, they would be able to destroy their enemies at the grassroots.

The only thing was that Dongfang Bai and his group honestly did not have much confidence in themselves to handle an invasion from high-rank True Gods. This created a psychological dilemma for them.

After receiving this less-than-satisfactory news from Lin Huang, Dongfang Bai led everyone back to their own camp, a helpless expression on his face.

Dongfang Bai very quickly directed Guan Zhong to contact Jiang Shan over in faraway First City and update Jiang Shan on the most recent situation here.

Jiang Shan’s response was, “If the True Gods arrive, you should all cooperate with Dynasty as best as you can. After all, Lin Huang’s the only one who is capable of dealing with medium and high-rank True Gods. I’ll attempt to sugarcoat the current battle results and try as much as I can to encourage more Virtual Gods to join the fight.”

…

At Dynasty’s site, Mr. Fu could not help but lament.

“I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that our enemies have stopped exploring.”

“It’s a good thing, of course.” Lin Huang smiled. “The fact that they’ve stopped exploring shows us that they’ve reached the limit of losses that they can cope with. Through the numbers they’ve lost, we can roughly estimate the total number of invaders this time.

“That last wave especially—they only sent a hundred Virtual God rank-9s. I’m guessing that this time they’ve only brought three hundred Virtual Gods rank-9s with them; there shouldn’t be more than four hundred. Based on these numbers right now, they shouldn’t have that many True Gods. My guess is that they have less than a hundred of them.

“Further analysis of this data indicates that the invaders are either from a top grade-4 organization or an organization above grade-4.

“If it’s a top grade-4 organization, their leader will only be a True God and there will only be a limited number of True Gods within the organization. As long as we eliminate all the invaders in one swoop in the upcoming wave, they most likely won’t have enough force to attempt a second invasion or even dare to attempt one.

“If it’s an organization that is above grade-4, the fight won’t be over even if they are unsuccessful in the current invasion. They will pick up the pieces very quickly and return! Even if Heavenly Gods are unable to arrive here directly, the strength of our enemy’s next invasion will far exceed their current attempt.”

After listening to Lin Huang’s words, Mr. Fu sank into silence for a while before continuing.

“I hope luck will be on our side, so the intruders we’re facing turn out to be from a top grade-4 organization.”

“I hope so too. Otherwise, I’ll have to stay even longer after dealing with this wave of invaders.” Lin Huang was not worried about the number of invasion waves. He was more concerned about whether or not he could eliminate this problem for good and depart this place with his mind at peace.

…

In the blink of an eye, another two days passed.

The rest of the Sword Servants arrived one after the other. Except for one remaining Sword Servant who was tasked with guarding Lin Xin at the Dynasty Headquarters, the remaining two hundred and sixty-seven Sword Servants had all arrived at the Abyss Brink. Their numbers had now surpassed the total number of Virtual Gods in the gravel world.

Upon seeing the increasing number of people in the Sword Alliance’s camp, discussions on the issue had become even more rampant.

There had never been many Virtual Gods in the gravel world, to begin with. Most of the time, Virtual Gods would run into each other quite frequently on a regular basis. Being in long-term closed-door cultivation meant that it was rare to see unfamiliar faces. In the Sword Alliance, however, all of them were strangers to the rest. Naturally, that gave rise to considerable debate.

The Sword Servants paid no heed to these discussions.

Lin Huang could not be bothered either, even though he knew the truth of the matter.

Deep down, Lin Huang was aware that later on when the Sword Servants demonstrated their actual abilities, it would be dazzlingly impressive in the eyes of everyone present. When that moment arrived, all criticism would dissipate like smoke.

On the third day, Lin Huang felt an abnormal fluctuation within his body.

He sent his consciousness within him to investigate and discovered that the source of the fluctuation was Wu Mo’s blood of the True God.

Wu Mo was displaying signs of awakening!

Ever since the fight against the God Master’s will two years ago that completely depleted her spiritual energy, Wu Mo had remained in a state of slumber. Even after Lin Huang arrived in the great world, massacring countless True Gods and imbuing her body with spiritual energy to the point of saturation, she had never woken up.

Lin Huang knew that he could not be impatient in such a situation. There could have been many reasons why she had not woken up, and Lin Huang did not attempt to awaken her forcefully either. He just waited patiently for her to wake up in her own time.

However, this time, she started to show signs of stirring—whether it was because she sensed the gravel world was under invasion or for some other reason was unknown.

“What impeccable timing to wake up. We’ll have another individual with true god-level combat strength to join us in the fray,” Lin Huang murmured in a low voice as he watched the blood of the True God’s internal aura grow stronger by the second.

He very quickly retracted his consciousness back into his body and gave his surroundings a quick scan. Realizing that nobody had noticed this inconspicuous fluctuation that came from within him, Lin Huang rose to his feet instantly and headed to the Emperor Palace, which was camouflaged as a tent.

His sudden departure attracted the attention of quite a number of people, but nobody thought too much of it.

Mr. Fu’s eyes were glued to Lin Huang until Lin Huang entered the tent as he felt somewhat surprised. However, he did not look into the matter and soon shifted his gaze in a different direction.

After returning to the Emperor Palace, Lin Huang patiently waited for Wu Mo’s aura within the blood of the True God to gradually strengthen.

After about two or three minutes, Wu Mo’s aura finally rose to its peak, and she woke up from her deep sleep that had lasted for nearly two years.

“Sister Momo!” Lin Huang immediately greeted Wu Mo after sensing that she had awakened.

“Lin Huang…” Wu Mo quickly consolidated her translucent body, and immediately checked on her state of being. “My spiritual energy has been completely replenished!”

Lin Huang smiled and nodded. When he was killing True Gods in the great world, apart from the ten God’s Figurine’s Combat Souls being imbued with spiritual energy, any excess spiritual energy had been infused into Wu Mo’s body. Her peak state was only that of a third-rank True God, so her spiritual energy had been replenished a long time ago.

“Did you go to the great world?” Wu Mo’s reaction was immediate, because the gravel world simply did not have enough resources to fully replenish her spiritual energy.

“I did, and now I’ve come back.” Lin Huang nodded. “How do you feel?”

 “Pretty good. My soul has almost been restored to its peak state, and I feel better than I did two years ago,” Wu Mo said with a smile. “I just lack a physical body.”

“I’ve already prepared one for you. It’s the body of a Protoss,” Lin Huang said, retrieving a body from out of his space storage—a female clad in a black dress

“She was a sorcerer-type, and her combat level before her demise was fifth-rank True God. When I first killed her, I thought that her physical body would be highly compatible with you. I’ve preserved this body all this time because I wasn’t sure when you’d wake up.”

As Lin Huang spoke, he summoned the drop of blood of the True God that was leeching off of Wu Mo’s body, bringing it out of her.

“The residual aura of the corpse is very powerful. Were you really the one who killed her?” Wu Mo had a slightly surprised expression on her face.

“Yes, I killed her.” Lin Huang nodded.

Wu Mo’s illusory silhouette floated in the air, her feet not touching the ground. Staring intently at Lin Huang, she scrutinized him carefully and soon discovered an anomaly. “Your combat level is only Virtual God rank-3, but it seems like you’ve already mastered Rule Bending Power. It wouldn’t be impossible for you to kill a True God, but this body did belong to a medium-rank True God who was at fifth-rank after all—she was even a Protoss…”

Since they were in the gravel world, the Thousand Face mask on Lin Huang’s face simply disguised his combat level. It did not disguise his appearance, nor did it conceal the fluctuations of the Rule Bending Power in his body.

“My combat level is disguised. It’s actually at Virtual God rank-6,” Lin Huang explained his combat power but did not extrapolate.

“Alright, we’ll assume you killed her then,” Wu Mo said as she pursed her lips.

Lin Huang could not help smiling; however, he gave no further explanation.

“Try the body out to see if it’s good or not. If it isn’t suitable, we can change it to another one.”

Wu Mo nodded. Her illusory silhouette entered the blood of the True God and took control of it. The drop of blood turned into a stream of flowing purple-gold light and flowed into the sorcerer-type corpse from between its eyebrows.

A moment later, life force gradually began filling the sorcerer-type corpse.

After about five to six minutes, the life force in the body of the sorcerer-type finally reached its peak.

Wu Mo opened her eyes little by little, sat up slowly, and then looked down at her hands and body.

“This physical body feels really good! It’s even stronger than my original body, and our compatibility is over 85%. It should be even higher once I take some time to get used to it…”

Wu Mo was obviously very satisfied with this new body.

“As long as you think it’s suitable.” Lin Huang smiled and nodded.

After getting a sense of her new body for a few moments, Wu Mo quickly calmed her excitement and asked, “How’s the situation in the gravel world now? Has the invasion begun?”

“A few days ago, those over in the great world were testing the dimensional gateways, but fortunately, the tests failed. They’ve probably been trying to suppress the world will of the gravel world for the past few days. It’s estimated that after the suppression is successful, they’ll arrive directly with an army… “Lin Huang briefly described the situation of the gravel world.

Wu Mo asked a few more questions regarding the great world’s impending invasion of the gravel world, and Lin Huang answered them all one by one.

“According to the sense of rejection that I currently feel from the world will, I estimate that there’s still a few more days before the world will is completely suppressed. I’d like to take advantage of these few days to go back to the floating land and fetch something. After I retrieve what I want, I’ll rush back here as soon as I can.” Wu Mo felt a sense of rejection from the world will, and quietly sealed her combat level at virtual god-level rank-9.

“Go then.” Lin Huang did not have any objections.

“Aren’t you afraid that I’ll become a deserter?” Wu Mo smiled so widely her eyes crinkled up like crescent moons.

“I’m not afraid.” Lin Huang shook his head.

In reality, there was something else that he did not say out loud—’It doesn’t matter whether you become a deserter or not. As long as I’m here, this wave of invasion will be futile.’

“Don’t worry, I’ll come back before the world will is completely suppressed!” Wu Mo said and headed toward the gates of the Emperor Palace.

Lin Huang followed behind and sent her off.

Mr. Fu was obviously taken aback at seeing a woman suddenly walk out of the tent.

Many of the people around also turned their eyes in her direction, their gazes full of curiosity.

“Is it another summoning beast?”

“I don’t think that’s the case this time. She looks more like a secret mistress.”

“She came out less than ten minutes after Emperor Lin entered the tent. That’s rather too brief a time.”

The crowd started chattering.

Wu Mo glanced over her surroundings. Naturally, she heard everyone’s comments, but she paid them no heed and turned her head back to ask Lin Huang a question.

“Previously, didn’t you mention that there weren’t many Virtual Gods in this era? This isn’t considered ‘not many’!”

“There are more than two hundred of them whom I brought back from the great world for reinforcements. More than half of the rest were transformed from Demigods this year,” Lin Huang explained.

“Alright. I’ll return to the floating land first; I’ll be back in a few days.” Wu Mo did not enquire any further.

After saying that, her figure rose directly into the air, and she sped toward the exit of the Abyss Brink.

This scenario baffled everyone even more.

“That young lady just now…” Only after seeing Wu Mo’s figure disappear into the sky in a flash did Mr. Fu come back to his senses and question Lin Huang.

“That’s Wu Mo, the Sorcerer Goddess I told you about before—the one from the Sorcerer Dao Epoch.”

“Oh, I remember, the one from the floating land.” Mr. Fu recalled that Lin Huang had brought up this True God member of the Wu Tribe in one of their past conversations. “I remember you said that she was leeching off of your body and had fallen into a deep sleep. So, she’s woken up?”

“She’s woken up, yes.”

“Why did she fly away? Did you two have a fight?” Mr. Fu inquired, sensing gossip.

“I don’t have that kind of relationship with her…” Lin Huang immediately caught what Mr. Fu was implying, and said with a helpless expression on his face, “She left because she wanted to go back to the floating land and retrieve something.”

“Oh.” Mr. Fu’s expression said ‘I understand’.

During the few days after Wu Mo’s departure, Lin Huang could clearly feel that the world will of the gravel world was rapidly weakening.

Every day, he sat in the reclining chair in front of the tent, seemingly closing his eyes in meditation. In actuality, however, he was silently cultivating his Seamless technique to strengthen his telekinesis.

His telekinetic threads increased by about 4800 daily. By the time the total number of his telekinetic threads had increased from 200,000 to about 230,000, the world will had been weakened to the point where it could barely be sensed.

Lin Huang knew that the official invasion was about to begin!

It was on this day that an unexpected acquaintance of Lin Huang came to the Abyss Brink.

Seeing this person—whose face was righty percent familiar—appearing before him, Lin Huang hesitated to acknowledge him for a moment.

On the contrary, it was Mr. Fu who suddenly exclaimed after being briefly stunned.

“Mo Kui?!”

The man nodded slightly at Mr. Fu. “I’m Lin Xuan. Mo Kui is the name of my primordium, and I’m his clone.”

“Xiaoxuan, is that really you?!” Only now did Lin Huang acknowledge him.

The reason Lin Huang was not sure of the newcomer’s identity a moment ago was that Lin Xuan looked at least twenty-five or twenty-six years old; his combat strength was also at virtual god-level rank-9.

When Lin Huang first found Lin Xuan, the lad was barely a ten-year-old child. Under normal circumstances, he should have had the appearance of a thirteen or fourteen-year-old boy after four years.

Now when Lin Huang looked at him, however, Lin Xuan looked a bit more mature than himself.

“It’s me…” Lin Xuan turned to look at Lin Huang, a conflicted look in his eyes. For a moment, he did not know how to address Lin Huang any more.

“You’ve grown taller, and you look more mature than me.” Lin Huang smiled and patted Lin Xuan on the shoulder.

“I adjusted my body’s growth rate slightly, so biologically I’m actually twenty-five years old now,” Lin Xuan briefly explained.

“Let’s sit down and talk.” Lin Huang pulled another chair out for Lin Xuan and tugged him over to sit in front of the tent.

He actually wanted to bring Lin Xuan into the Emperor Palace to chat, but the invasion by the great world could start at any moment. Therefore, he could only chat while sitting outside the tent so that he could keep an eye out for any changes in the dimensional gateways.

“Where have you been all these years?”

“I spent most of my time in the Land of Origin, inquiring about my past, and recovering my memories.”

“Did you find out what happened?”

“Yes, I’ve investigated thoroughly.” Lin Xuan nodded slightly, then lowered his head to look down at the ground and continued, “The outcome was that I’m just a clone that was bred from a machine.”

“Xiaoxuan, it doesn’t matter where you came from. What’s important is that Mo Kui is Mo Kui and you are you. You’re an independent individual with your own independent personality, and you have different experiences and different worldviews. You can live your life the way you want to. You may have come from Mo Kui, but you’re not a replica of him, and you’re certainly not his vassal. Don’t live in his shadow…” Lin Huang comforted Lin Xuan.

After learning about Mo Kui’s situation from Mr. Fu, he actually had already expected this outcome.

“You don’t have to comfort me like this. I’ve already come to accept it.” Lin Xuan raised his head and looked at Lin Huang. “When I first found out about it, it was really difficult for me to accept, but I’ve been letting things sink in for the past few years. Now, although I haven’t completely let it go yet, I’ve pretty much taken in everything.”

“That’s good, then.” Lin Huang did not say much more.

“I heard… you went to the great world for a year. How have you been in the past year?” Lin Xuan could not help asking.

In the past few years, he had actually been discreetly keeping track of Lin Huang and Lin Xin’s movements. After Lin Huang went to the great world, he had even secretly gone to Emperor City, leaving only after being reassured that Lin Xin was safe there.

“My year in the great world was very fulfilling. Most of my time was spent in cultivation and increasing my strength.”

“Are there many powerhouses there?” Lin Xuan asked again.

“Quite a lot. In the great world, Virtual God is just the starting point for cultivation. After that, there’s True God, Heavenly God, and even Lord.”

“Then, what’s the combat level of the fellow who’s invading our world? Have you managed to find out?”

“I didn’t come across any relevant information when I was in the great world. However, through their testing during this period, I’ve roughly been able to determine that our opponent is at least a top-notch grade-4 organization. In other words, their leader is at least a ninth-rank True God or stronger.”

“Our world rules are incomplete. The arrival of Heavenly Gods would directly lead to the collapse of the world, so they can only send over ninth-rank True Gods at most,” Lin Xuan commented, then continued, “I should more or less be able to deal with third-rank True Gods, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do anything if they’re any stronger. That’s to say, middle and high-rank True Gods will be practically invincible once they arrive…”

“Don’t worry, I have a plan to deal with it.” As soon as Lin Huang said that, Lin Xuan carefully scrutinized him.

Even though he did not directly voice his doubts, they were still clearly written on Lin Xuan’s face.

“Let’s not talk about this anymore. How’s Sis…Lin Xin doing?” Lin Xuan almost said ‘Sister Xin’ out of habit.

“I went into closed-door cultivation not long after returning to the gravel world. She went into closed-door cultivation not long after I did and has still not come out yet.”

“All the Virtual Gods of Dynasty have been despatched; is it still safe in Emperor City?” Lin Xuan immediately asked again.

“Don’t worry, I’ve left a bodyguard with her.” Lin Huang secretly mused in his heart, ‘So you do have a conscience then, kiddo. You’re still concerned about Lin Xin’s safety.’

“Oh, that’s good.” Only then did Lin Xuan breathe a sigh of relief. He had rushed to the Abyss Brink right after he had finished with his own affairs without stopping by Emperor City, so he could not help inquiring after noticing that Lin Xin was not by Lin Huang’s side.

Just as the two of them were chatting, Wu Mo returned hurriedly.

She seemed fit as a fiddle and much livelier than she had been when she left a few days ago. She appeared to have adjusted to her new physical body very smoothly.

“How are things over at the floating land, Sister Momo?” Lin Huang asked by way of greeting.

“It’s a mess; it took me a few days to sort it all out. If it wasn’t for the war that’s about to start here, I would’ve taught those bastards a lesson!” Wu Mo said angrily, then noticed Lin Xuan’s presence. “Who’s this handsome fellow?”

“Lin Xuan,” Lin Huang introduced, then added, “My younger brother.”

Lin Xuan glanced at Lin Huang after hearing that. He did not refute Lin Huang’s words, however; he just smiled and nodded at Wu Mo.

“Your younger brother? How come he looks older than you?” Wu Mo asked bluntly.

“He just matured faster than me; can’t that be the case?” Lin Huang shot back in return, then changed the topic. “The war is about to start. How have you been adjusting to your new physical body?”

“Compatibility has been increased to 93%,” Wu Mo replied with a smile, obviously very pleased with her new physical body. “How have things been around here these last few days?”

“No explorers were teleported over during the days after you left.”

“That’s good news. It means that they’ve suffered some great losses during their previous testing.” Wu Mo raised an eyebrow.

“That’s what I think too.” Lin Huang nodded in agreement.

After barely exchanging a few words with Wu Mo, a new round of spatial fluctuations was suddenly transmitted from the dimensional gateways which had hitherto been still for several days…

Everyone in the Abyss Brink stopped what they were doing almost simultaneously and looked up at the dimensional gateways.

Everyone knew that the official invasion war was about to begin!

Six days ago…

The great world, in the Undead Dimension.

From his seat on the golden snake chair, the expression on the golden-haired man’s face looked extremely unpleasant.

All twelve waves of explorations had resulted in failure. Not only that, but the entire squad had also been annihilated once more.

No matter how many Virtual Gods he sent on these exploration quests, this gravel world—with all its incomplete rules—was akin to an endless black hole that swallowed everything up, leaving no trace at all. Not a single piece of information had managed to make its way back here.

“The whole group’s been brought to its knees in a split second again, and we still don’t know which of the dimensional gateways have no issues. What do you plan to do now?” asked the long-legged young lady, turning her head abruptly in the golden-haired man’s direction. “Wait for the suppressing effects to kick in, send in the army straight away, and force our way through without knowing what the situation is on the other side?”

The golden-haired man remained silent for a long time without answering her question. After a while, he slowly opened his mouth to speak. Yet, the answer he gave was completely unrelated to her question. “These next few days, everyone get a move on and work together. Herd all the Abyssal creatures in the Undead Dimension over here, whether they be spirit-type or undying species!”

“You’re thinking of using them to continue exploring?” The long-legged lady’s eyes gleamed when she heard his answer. In reality, this was not such a bad idea at all. At least they did not have to keep expending people from their own side.

“I refuse to believe that they can still kill off millions of spirit-type and undying species instantly!” The golden-haired man snarled.

After settling on this strategy, the entire group spent a bit more time discussing the details. In very short order they dismissed and went their separate ways to carry out this new plan.

…

Simultaneously in time with the gravel world.

The great world, in the Undead Dimension.

From his seat on the golden snake chair, the golden-haired man once again gathered everyone together.

For the past six days, none of the thirty-plus True Gods and tens of thousands of Virtual Gods were idle.

The True Gods hunted solo while the Virtual Gods hunted in groups. Whatever Abyssal lifeforms they managed to get their hands on—spirit-type and undying species alike—were all tossed into their own God Territories.

Only today—the sixth day after the command—did everyone finally cease hunting. As per the time agreed upon, they all returned to where the dimensional gateways were.

“True Gods, report the number of your captures! Virtual Gods, tally up your totals while we deal with the reports here.”

The golden-haired man swept the entire surrounding area with his gaze and directed his order to the assembled individuals.

“Let me announce my hunting results first then. In the past six days, I’ve managed to capture 311 True God monsters. Among them, there are 53 high-rank ones, 193 medium-rank ones, and 65 low-rank ones.”

The long-legged young lady was the second person to speak.

“I’ve captured a total of 287 True God monsters—41 high-ranks, 147 medium-ranks, and 99 low-ranks.”

The third person to speak up was the snake-headed man.

“My total is 265 True God monsters. There are 43 high-rank ones, 159 medium-rank ones, and 63 low-rank ones.”

…

All thirty-seven True Gods took turns to announce their glorious results acquired over the past six days.

The snake-headed man also tabulated the final numbers.

“The number of True God monsters captured is 4981 in total. Out of these, 347 of them are high-rank true god-level monsters, 1819 are medium-rank monsters, and 2815 are low-rank ones. The total number for Virtual God monsters is 2,860,000 with 338,000 of them high-level Virtual Gods…”

In merely six short days, the monsters everyone had managed to capture exceeded nearly twenty times their own number.

“First, seal all exits in the area to prevent them from escaping! After that, based on the distribution of the space tunnels, section the place up and seal it to create thirty-five divisions,” the golden-haired man ordered the moment he saw that everyone was present.

Several True Gods who were experts in setting up barriers immediately went into action. They worked together to seal up the entire area; they then created a secondary Space Seal around the nearby surroundings of the space tunnels. Thus, thirty-five tunnel divisions were created.

“Everyone, mark all the Virtual Gods that you’ve captured with life imprints. Don’t miss any of them out. Once this has been done, send the Virtual Gods that you hunted to Long Tail and the other the thirty-five members of the group. Remember who you hand over your captures to. Once the teleportation is completed, whoever’s imprint that is not annihilated for more than five seconds must immediately report to me on who your receiver is, then we can single out which space tunnel might be safe.

“White Chief, calculate how many Virtual Gods Long Tail and the others should each receive—how many beginner-stage, intermediate-stage, and high-level Virtual Gods. The numbers don’t need to be too specific; long as all thirty-five groups have nearly the same number, that will be good enough…”

After the golden-haired man had completed a series of arrangements, all thirty-five True Gods finished conducting the handovers very quickly. They then each selected a sealed division and stepped into it.

The golden-haired man and the snake-headed man were the only two who did not enter any divisions and remained where they were.

After everyone had entered their sealed divisions, the aura in the golden-haired man’s entire body started to soar rapidly. In merely a few seconds, it had peaked. Like a rock that had been tossed onto the surface of a lake, his overwhelming aura rippled and spread out in all directions.

Among the thirty-something True Gods present, there were only three other individuals who were ninth-rank True Gods apart from the golden-haired man.

These three people were the most sensitive to the eruption of the golden-haired man’s aura. They could detect things that outsiders could not because of their heightened sense of awareness.

The strength of the golden-haired man’s aura was clearly now very close to the level of a Heavenly God; it had far exceeded that of an ordinary ninth-ranked True God.

As they sensed this spine-chilling aura sweeping through, nearly everybody present felt their heart skip a beat. Even breathing felt much weightier now.

It was at this moment that the golden-haired man suddenly let out an explosive roar.

“Now!”

Like a detonating bomb, his voice filled every corner of the area instantly, ringing clearly in everyone’s ears.

The instant he gave his command, his terrifying near-Heavenly-God-level aura enveloped the entire place. Everyone felt even their breathing had become heavier.

At this very moment, the thirty-five True Gods who had entered their respective sealed divisions activated their individual God Territories, releasing all the Virtual God monsters contained within.

The only thought that occupied the minds of these millions of Virtual God Abyssal creatures the moment they were released—spirit-type and undying species alike—was freedom.

However, the next second they all sensed the life-threatening aura emanating from the golden-haired man.

This aura was incredibly dangerous!

All the creatures started frantically scuttling away from where the golden-haired man was in their attempts to escape this territory!

However, a seal that had been collaboratively created by several high-rank True Gods was not something that mere Virtual Gods could shift at all. Millions of monsters bombarded the seal one after another. Unfortunately, the only effect it had was to cause barely-perceptible ripples.

As their attempts to escape were futile, they finally realized the truth. Eventually, they chose to swarm over toward the spatial dimensional gateway nearby. After all, the sooner they could leave this damnable place, the better!

Who cared what sort of place lay on the other side of the dimensional gateway—they could deal with that when they escaped!

In roughly less than five minutes, desperate with nowhere else to run, all the Virtual God monsters swarmed through the dimensional gateways in all thirty-five divisions!

“I can’t wait to see if you can still instantly kill off three million Virtual Gods arriving all at one go!” Watching the number of monsters in all divisions clearing out completely, the golden-haired man could not help but quirk up the corners of his mouth slightly.

In the third layer of the Abyss Brink, the spatial fluctuations this time were much greater than before in all thirty-three space rifts.

As he sensed the abnormality of the spatial fluctuations, Lin Huang could not help tightly knitting his brows together.

Under normal circumstances, fluctuations from dimensional teleportation would be affected by the number of individuals being teleported. However, the spatial fluctuations this time far exceeded Lin Huang’s previous prediction.

‘Based on the strength of these fluctuations, I’m afraid the number of people being teleported through is over a hundred times more than their previous exploration attempts!’

These teleportation numbers baffled Lin Huang greatly.

Based on the number of explorers sent six days ago, the enemy’s last try should have seriously crippled them. Otherwise, they would not have put a complete halt on their exploration attempts before they had figured out which dimensional gateway was safe.

Yet now, it seemed as if the enemy had not exhausted even one percent of their manpower in their previous attempts.

Despite not understanding the reason behind the current situation, Lin Huang snapped out of his present mental state and pushed his questions to the back of his mind. He returned his attention to the fight at hand.

‘There are at least a million invaders in this wave—in fact, there might be more than two million…’ Lin Huang made a rough estimation from the spatial fluctuations. ‘Even if the Sword Servants, Bai, and the rest unseal their combat strength, they won’t be able to kill all the invaders in a short time. The invaders will realize all the dimensional gateways are working perfectly fine then. Following that, the enemies’ True Gods will arrive; this is already inevitable.

‘The biggest problem right now is that the number of Virtual Gods has far exceeded my previous assumptions. It’s entirely possible that there are more True Gods than I expected…’

He had originally estimated that the number of True Gods among the invaders would not exceed one hundred but judging from the current situation, there might be far more than one hundred.

In all honesty, the arrival of millions of Virtual Gods in this wave did not worry Lin Huang. He was more concerned about the True Gods arriving in the coming waves.

After all, he only had a limited number of True Gods on his side.

Other than himself and his army of summoning beasts, there were only three hundred-plus Sword Servants.

If too many True Gods showed up and Lin Huang’s side could not hold them back, the Virtual Gods in the gravel world might face the possibility of complete annihilation.

Once this line of defense in the Abyss Brink was broken, those True Gods would be able to march straight into the gravel world’s mainland. Once they were beyond the Abyss Brink, they could use the power of their Divine Telekinesis and easily locate the cultivation strongholds of major organizations to launch a full-on massacre.

The current cultivation epoch might face total destruction once again.

The moment his mind strayed to these possible outcomes, Lin Huang felt sudden pressure on his initial full confidence.

Meanwhile, the spatial fluctuations from the dimensional gateways grew stronger.

Lin Huang and Mr. Fu were not the only ones to notice the anomalies; other Virtual Gods in the gravel world rapidly sensed them too.

Amid the consternation of everyone present, Lin Huang’s voice suddenly burst forth like an explosion.

“Attention, all organizations! Utilize all your area-of-effect attack methods! It doesn’t matter if they are divine abilities, divine skills, weapons, or equipment—as long as they have an area-of-effect attack, use them in battle! The invading army this wave may very well exceed millions!”

Although Lin Huang was not the chief of the Union Government, everyone had already witnessed his abilities in action. As a result, they readily believed him when he said this and readjusted their mental preparations for the battle ahead.

After shouting his orders to those present, Lin Huang directed a new command to the imperial monsters.

“You can all retreat now. Stop thinking about how to instantly kill off your enemies and switch to area-of-effect attacks. You may unseal your combat strength whenever necessary!”

After receiving their new orders, the imperial monsters started rapidly retreating one after the other.

Immediately after Bai and the rest retreated, the spatial fluctuations emanating from the dimensional gateways peaked almost simultaneously.

A second later, a sea of invaders maniacally swarmed out from the dimensional gateways like a mighty cataract.

The instant they teleported over, all the Abyssal creatures—spirit-type and undying species alike—that had been forced into the dimensional gateways by the Thousand Snake Sect now found themselves eye-to-eye with this assembly of the gravel world’s low-level Virtual God natives.

Suddenly finding the perfect catharsis for their fury, millions of monsters maniacally swarmed toward the gravel world’s Virtual Gods.

Although Lin Huang had just given them a heads-up, the Virtual Gods in the gravel world were still stunned for a while when they saw that the number of invaders far exceeded their own.

The summoning beasts under Lin Huang’s command made their moves without hesitation.

Ku Rong’s figure floated in midair, suspended with his eyes closed and hands clasped as he chanted phrase after phrase of religious scripture. As the scriptures started to echo through the area, myriads of golden ripples emanated from his body like waves and unleashed in every single direction. As the waves passed through all the undying species, spirit-types, and other Abyssal Creatures, they screeched in agony and disintegrated into ashes.

As a Buddhist cultivator, the nature of the Divine Power within Ku Rong was effective in countering negative energies.

Even if he only had the combat strength of a Virtual God rank-1, he could already put up a solid defense against a Virtual God rank-3—what more his current display of combat strength that was equal to the level of a Virtual God rank-9.

Wherever the religious scriptures were able to reach and cleanse, not a single one of the virtual god-level monsters survived for more than a second.

Apart from Ku Rong, Bai’s performance was also eye-catching.

His eyes were glowing scarlet but he did not take any action whatsoever.

However, the air surrounding his body was saturated with colorless, odorless Almighty Vampire Particles that floated everywhere—but whenever the particles landed on a monster, they burrowed into the monster’s body. After a while, the monsters’ bodies started exploding one by one, transforming into Blood Demons at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Each Blood Demon retained nearly all of the monster’s original powers; they transformed into warriors under Bai’s command and started attacking the invaders instead.

Somewhere near Bai, Grimace had managed to get a group of rebels under his power.

What differentiated Grimace from Bai was that Grimace was cackling loudly as his ghastly outline glided through the sea of monster troops.

All the monsters descended into chaos whenever Grimace passed by and began to attack each other wildly.

This time, it appeared that Grimace bewitched the monsters with sound waves. Whoever heard his cackling would be dragged into a state of hallucination.

In another area, Lancelot—in a full set of Crimson Armor—manipulated tens of thousands of flying swords, sending them weaving through the army of monsters. With each attack, he picked off tens of thousands of invaders.

Charcoal’s area-of-effect attack was even more direct.

Nearly everything touched by the Black Dragon Flame he spewed forth let out roars of pain and disintegrated into ashes.

Tyrant was more violent. Straight away, he transformed into a Celestial Giant and stomped about with his nine hundred thousand meters of height. With every step he took, he stomped across an area more than hundreds of thousands of meters, crushing everything into dust.

In this battle, Warlord displayed his superiority in team fights.

Seconds before the monsters arrived, he summoned millions of robots that filled the entire spatial dimensional gateway with dense gunfire, riddling the monsters with so many holes they looked like sieves.

He was also the only one to annihilate all invaders in the dimensional gateway in less than five seconds—even faster than Ku Rong, Bai, and the rest.

The other summoning beasts like Witch did well too. Although none of them unsealed their combat strength further, they had basically outdone themselves with their Virtual God rank-9 combat strength.

When they saw the ferocity of Lin Huang’s imperial beasts at the peak of their prowess, the crowd of Virtual Gods in the gravel world was emboldened. They quickly formed their battle formations and joined in the fight!

“So many undying species and spirit-types?!”

Lin Huang’s brows furrowed upon clearly detecting the invaders’ auras, but it did not take him long to realize what had happened.

“Could those bastards have captured these creatures from the Undead Dimension?!”

A sudden epiphany hit Lin Huang. He now understood why the number of invaders that arrived this time had exceeded his estimation by so much.

The one thing the Undead Dimension had an excess of was undying species and spirit-types. In the past six days, the invaders from the great world had obviously captured massive numbers of native monsters and Abyssal trial participants from the Undead Dimension to front their army.

This also explained the monsters’ extreme fury after they were teleported here.

Anyone who was kidnapped and then forced onto the battlefield would feel the same way as well.

Lin Huang was considerably satisfied with how Bai and the rest of his summoning beasts were performing. However, he chose to sit on the sidelines and watch this time, without making any moves.

Since the curtain had already risen as far as war was concerned, there was no longer any reason to keep pursuing instant kills.

The fact that there was no problem with the dimensional gateways would be discovered by their enemies sooner or later.

During moments like this, he preferred to cut some slack accordingly so that the invaders would be misled into underestimating the gravel world’s strength. A brief show of weakness would prompt the enemy True Gods to join in the fray sooner.

If the gravel world started the fight in too overpowering a manner, it might trigger the invaders to be much warier. The act of hunting down Abyssal creatures to be sent to the front lines was a result of the gravel world displaying too much force in the enemies’ exploration stages. Lin Huang did not wish to see any more such surprises.

Although the summoning beasts had yet to utilize their full abilities and the Sword Servants were preserving their energy, the massive crowd of Virtual Gods in the gravel world had nearly reached their limits.

They had utilized an assortment of ranged attacks, both middle-ranged and long-ranged.

As for the Union Government, they utilized the True God Crasher immediately.

Differing from the God Crasher Lin Huang obtained that could only cause damage to demigods, the Union Government’s True God Crasher had an alloy barrel that was made using Divine Stones as the main component. The weapon utilized Divine Crystals as its power source and Virtual Gods had to infuse it with Divine Power to activate it.

If a Virtual God rank-4 were to activate the True God Crasher, its power would be sufficient to annihilate a Virtual God rank-6. Additionally, the True God Crasher had area-of-effect attacks. This made it unnecessary for the attacks to completely land on the target. As long as the target was within range of the attack, they would be overwhelmed even if they did not die.

However, weapons such as this had a more severe flaw as well. The higher the combat level of its user, the greater the power unleashed by the Crasher. However, the number of Divine Crystals expended would also be higher.

Divine Crystals, in themselves, were considered an extremely rare commodity in the gravel world. If not for the Union Government obtaining plenty of Divine Crystals over the past year via Royalty’s duplication, the Union Government’s existing Divine Crystal store would only have allowed them to use the True God Crasher a few times.

Other than the Union Government, other top organizations also played their trump cards.

Nearly every Virtual God hunter in the Hunter Association had brought along two or three beast spirits of nearly the same combat strength.

Beast spirits shared some similarities with summoning beasts, but beast spirits had no physical bodies. Therefore, they were immune to most physical attacks but the duration of their summoning was limited.

After summoning hundreds of beast spirits—which even assembled into a gigantic battle formation taking the shape of a humanoid monster holding a gigantic sword—the battle formation shadow possessed abilities beyond that of a Virtual God rank-9.

With every slash delivered by the formation, wherever its Sword Energy passed through, monster carcasses piled up.

On Misery’s side, more than thirty Virtual Gods assembled in a battle formation that took the shape of a Great Golden Buddha.

The Great Golden Buddha was over ten thousand zhang tall, and from its mouth came recitations of religious scriptures.

As the sound resonated, the bodies of the monsters began self-combusting in strange red fire.

Once the fire had burned down completely, the monsters’ bodies suddenly blossomed into enchanting red lotus flowers. In a trice, the battlefield seemed to be transformed into a lotus pond.

On Shadow Killer’s side, the battle formation consolidated into a Black-robed Death God.

The Black-robed Death God’s methods were rather bizarre.

Beneath its billowing black robe, the shadows of the countless invading monsters came to life and twined around their hosts’ physical bodies, dragging them toward the darkness beneath the black robe.

However, whoever was dragged beneath the black robe lost all signs of life as though their physical bodies and souls had been submerged in a bottomless abyss.

Meanwhile, Mystic Butterfly consolidated into a purplish-red butterfly-like monster.

The butterfly monster had a wingspan of over a hundred meters. Although much smaller compared to other battle formation shadows, it was more intricate and surpassingly beautiful.

As the butterfly’s wings fluttered, sprinkles of starlight scattered all over.

Yet, the moment they came into contact with just a tiny bit of these starlight sprinkles, the monsters’ bodies began festering immediately, sprouting countless pustules until all that was left was a puddle of bloody pus.

…

Lin Huang scanned his surroundings and noted that each organization was performing quite well.

However, what he took notice of most was not the Union Government, the Hunter Association, or Shadow Kill—it was Mystic Butterfly.

‘That starlight… It doesn’t seem like a toxin. It looks more like Abyssal pollution-type energy…’

Lin Huang had noticed that the invading monsters’ bodies festered and grew pustules after coming into contact with the starlight, not because of toxins; it was a mutation caused by energy pollution.

Despite camouflaging its move well, Mystic Butterfly failed to hide it from Lin Huang, who was proficient in rule power.

All along, Lin Huang had not bothered too much about this giant organization that had been created on the basis of intel-gathering. Yet, now it seemed like Mystic Butterfly had a definite connection to the Abyssal Tribe.

However, now was a time for war. Lin Huang had no plans to air Mystic Butterfly’s dirty laundry just yet.

Lin Huang had another reason for not wanting to burn this bridge. Just because Mystic Butterfly had Abyssal-related skills, it did not mean that they sided with the Abyssal camp. An example of that was Lin Huang himself. He commanded the Bug Tribe Queen Mother and the great Bug Tribe army as well as the galactic hive, but that did not mean he sided with the Bug Tribe.

‘I hope they’re only borrowing those abilities to use,’ mumbled Lin Huang internally while simultaneously adding Mystic Butterfly onto his personal watchlist.

Other than the several giant organizations, the other organizations seemed to be performing well too. Hardly any of them were deliberately slacking off.

Everyone understood that if they lost this fight, it would be equivalent to giving up the gravel world to the invaders. Nobody wanted to be enslaved; neither did they want to see their homeland laid to waste. Thus, there was nothing to do but to go all out in this battle.

This time around, even Mr. Fu rolled up his sleeves and joined in the fight, and Lin Huang did not stop him.

Mr. Fu unleashed his full power with no reservations the moment he entered the battle. Clad in full-body armor, he charged directly into the swarm of monsters.

Lin Huang retained a strand of Divine Telekinesis on Mr. Fu that allowed him to watch over Mr. Fu’s movements, in order to lend a hand whenever necessary.

Of course, the battlefield was not completely devoid of people who were slacking off.

Other than the summoning beasts under Lin Huang’s command, the Sword Servants did not unleash their full power at all in their attacks. None of them unsealed their combat strength to True God-level.

There was also Wu Mo and Lin Xuan.

Both of them knew that the conclusion of the entire battle did not lie in the current fight. They were both preserving the Divine Power within them in preparation for the battle with the True Gods later. To them, this fight was merely a warm-up and naturally did not require too much of their attention.

Meanwhile, Lin Huang himself did not make any moves. Even so, nobody complained.

Everyone had already witnessed his true abilities; they merely thought that he was conserving his energy for the later stages of battle.

Great world, Undead Dimension.

Countless numbers of abyssal monsters, undying species, and evil spirit types went through the dimensional gateways.

Teng Ran sat in his luxurious, golden chair, body tense. His golden hair was slightly disheveled, his torso leaning forward slightly, and his eyes were firmly fixed on the area where the dimensional gateways were.

A moment later, individuals reported back in succession that the undying species/evil spirit types they had marked had survived for more than 5 seconds.

As the number of people reporting back increased, Teng Ran finally relaxed his body slightly, and the curve of his lips widened.

“I knew it, there aren’t any problems with the space tunnels. It’s someone from the gravel world messing with us!”

The reason he could confirm this was that if there really was a problem with the space tunnels, no matter how many people entered, they should have all died instantly. For long-distance space tunnels that spanned across worlds such as these, once there was a problem with the Space Rule, the strength of the resulting Dimensional Storms and space rifts would far exceed what a True God’s physical body could withstand. If the explorers were fine after three seconds, then it could be assumed that teleportation was successful. Teng Ran had deliberately extended the reporting time to five seconds just to be on the safe side.

Ten seconds after teleportation.

The snake-headed man gave his report on the statistical data. “Fundamentally, we can conclude that there are thirty completely functional tunnels. There are two tunnels where the explorers died instantly, and three tunnels where the explorers all died within five to seven seconds.”

There were a total of thirty-five tunnels on the great world’s side, but only thirty-three teleportation exits on the gravel world’s side. The two malfunctioning tunnels had only just been discovered.

As for the remaining three problematic tunnels, they were the three space rifts guarded by Warlord, Ku Rong, and Bai respectively.

“Those three tunnels are probably being guarded by powerhouses. It’s unlikely that there’s a problem with the tunnels themselves,” Teng Ran made a snap decision, “However, let’s avoid using them, just in case. Thirty tunnels are already sufficient for our use.”

After he finished speaking, Teng Ran turned his head toward the snake-headed man. “Have them send their captured True Gods into those thirty tunnels.”

The snake-headed man nodded and immediately sent a voice transmission to the numerous True Gods present, then began arranging for a new wave of teleportation.

The thirty-seven True Gods, including Teng Ran, were swiftly divided into two batches, and the True Gods they had captured were sent through the dimensional gateways.

…

Gravel world, third layer of the Abyss Brink.

Lin Huang suddenly raised his head and looked in the direction of the dimensional gateways.

Millions of virtual god-level invaders had just been teleported through barely ten seconds ago, yet spatial fluctuations were already being transmitted from the dimensional gateways again.

This time, the spatial fluctuations were being emitted from only thirty dimensional gateways.

However, Lin Huang anticipated there was a high chance that True Gods would arrive with this wave.

The world will of the gravel world had completely fallen into a deep slumber and would not be waking up any time soon. In other words, the True Gods’ arrival would not be rejected any longer, and the invaders would be able to come through with full True God combat strength, their abilities no longer limited.

Although Mr. Fu and other local Virtual Gods were busy, they quickly noticed the anomaly in the space tunnels.

Most people had also guessed what was going to happen next, and the color drained from more than a few faces.

Lin Huang’s voice boomed through the air.

“Everyone get ready, the True Gods should be arriving in this wave! Don’t conceal anything; if you have any hidden trump cards that can go up against True Gods, now’s the time to bring them out!”

From the very beginning, he knew that among the many gravel world Virtual Gods present, more than thirty of them were concealing their true combat strength. Besides the two individuals from Misery, there were still six more people who possessed combat strength equivalent to a high-level Virtual God. Two of these six were Virtual God rank-9s and were from the Union Government and Shadow Killer respectively.

Including the two individuals from Misery, the gravel world would be able to form at least eight battle formations that would be able to go up against the True Gods. However, the strongest one would only be able to battle a third-rank True God.

Lin Huang also anticipated that in addition to battle formations, the other top organizations should also have other means of attack.

After this reminder, Lin Huang immediately directed his next words to all of his Sword Servants and summoning beasts via voice transmission, “Unseal your combat strength, and prepare to face the True Gods!”

Upon Lin Huang’s order, each of the summoning beasts immediately removed their seals.

Their auras— originally virtual god-level rank-9—instantaneously broke through to true god-level; terrifying auras were continuously released one after the other.

Sensing the unprecedentedly powerful auras of the summoning beasts, the Virtual Gods from the gravel world were completely stunned.

In particular, the few high-level Virtual Gods who had concealed their true combat strength were the ones who could clearly sense the summoning beasts’ true god-level power.

“This aura—it’s that of a True God?!”

“These summoning beasts under Lin Huang’s command are actually all True Gods?!”

“Exactly how strong is Lin Huang, for him to be able to control so many true god-level summoning beasts?!”

Right as everyone was still in shock, more waves of fearsome aura were felt from a short distance away.

Everyone turned their heads to look in that direction—it was the site where the Sword Alliance had set up camp. Wave upon wave of terrifying Sword Dao rose into the air, and each aura was almost strong enough to rip apart the heavens…

“That group from the Sword Alliance… they’re all actually True Gods?!”

“The strength of these guys’ auras exceeds even those of Lin Huang’s summoning beasts!”

“Where on earth did these sword cultivators pop out from?!”

…

Even the upper tiers of the Union Government—who had received the news from Lin Huang in advance—could not conceal the shock on their faces when they sensed the true aura of the individuals in the Sword Alliance.

“This group of reinforcements that Lin Huang brought back from the great world—the strength of their auras is more than a little terrifying!”

Seeing that the combat strength of the Sword Servants and the imperial monsters were all unsealed, Lin Huang waved his hand again in a grand gesture and summoned the mythical-level bug beasts—excluding several Bug Tribe Queen Mothers—before the second wave of teleportation could be completed.

A Celestial Centipede King, two Multi-eyed Worms, two Superbrain Worms, two Golden Bugs, Busby the Bug Servant, and four Spider Mother bug guardians—once the twelve bug beasts had been summoned, they immediately attracted everyone’s attention.

“The Bug Tribe?!”

“Don’t panic, these are all bug beasts that I subdued from the great world!” Lin Huang noticed that a lot of people were wary of the Bug Tribe and immediately ventured an explanation.

Although not many Imperial Censors would sign contracts with bug beasts, there was no rule stating that the summoning beasts of Imperial Censors had to be monsters other than bug beasts. In addition, Lin Huang had been to the great world; perhaps the Imperial Censors of the great world were able to control bug beasts. Upon considering these two points, most people relaxed.

In any case, it did not matter what type of species Lin Huang’s imperial monsters were. As long as he was a human and the imperial monsters he summoned fought for humans, that was enough. Why should they care if the monsters he summoned were bug beasts, Abyssal creatures, or other things?

The bodies of the twelve bug beasts quickly consolidated in front of Lin Huang; all their combat levels were that of third-rank True Gods.

Before Lin Huang’s twelve bug beasts could join the battle, the teleportation from the space tunnels had been completed…

Thousands of True God monsters had arrived!

Lin Huang used Divine Telekinesis to sweep around, and the expression on his face suddenly changed to one of shock.

Almost five thousand true god-level monsters had arrived!

His prediction had been off by miles. It must be noted that previously, he had predicted that the number of True God invaders would be no more than a hundred, but the actual number was fifty times more than that—what a smack in the face.

Nevertheless, Lin Huang also noticed that most of these nearly five thousand True Gods were undying species and spirit types, while a small number of them were Abyssal creatures. None of them were Protoss from the God Territory.

This further confirmed his previous guess—the invaders had captured a large number of monsters from the Undead Dimension to serve as vanguards; not only Virtual Gods but also True Gods.

Fortunately, among the nearly five thousand True Gods, most of them were low and medium-rank. There were not many high-rank ones—only three hundred of them—and among those, only three were ninth-rank.

Seeing the Sword Servants unhesitatingly charging into the battlefield filled with True Gods, Lin Huang activated his Divine Telekinesis, and over three hundred telekinetic flying daggers shot out from the cuffs of his sleeves. The blood-colored arcs, which were like lightning bolts, delineated boundary line after boundary line, heading off all the high-rank True Gods among the arrivals.

In reality, with his current strength being close to the limit of a True God, it would not have been difficult for him to eliminate these high-rank True Gods within seconds. The reason he only obstructed them and did not kill them outright was actually to avoid exposing his strength to the real enemies from the great world that had yet to arrive.

If he were to instantly kill these high-rank True Gods, there would be a high chance that the real enemies from the great world would call for reinforcements.

Everyone from the gravel world also bore witness to the scenario of Lin Huang blocking off the numerous high-rank True Gods entirely by his own abilities.

Although the vast majority of people could not gauge the specific combat level of the group of monsters that Lin Huang had blocked off, they could still sense the flagrantly terrifying aura emitted by each of those monsters.

Each aura was like a monstrous demonic flame in the eyes of Dongfang Bai and the others, and their hearts were beating wildly just seeing them from a distance. There was no doubt that if even just one of those beasts were to set foot here, it would be enough to annihilate the entire gravel world.

However, Lin Huang—relying solely on his telekinetic flying daggers—was able to block off these giant monsters from entering everyone else’s battlefields.

The people who previously might have made an extremely high estimation of Lin Huang’s strength suddenly found themselves re-evaluating.

“The three hundred-plus monsters cordoned off by Lin Huang are probably all high-rank True Gods, but he stopped all of them on his own… I underestimated his strength once again,” Dongfang Bai murmured, “The gravel world really is too small for him.”

It was only then that Dongfang Bai was truly convinced by Jiang Shan’s words, “The gravel world is too small for Lin Huang.”

“At present, the situation still isn’t looking very good. The number of invaders—Virtual Gods or True Gods—far exceeds our own forces. Lin Huang alone can block off more than three hundred high-rank True Gods, but he has less than three hundred Sword Servants, and only a few dozen summoning beasts. The number of True Gods on the invaders’ side is ten times more than Lin Huang’s numbers.

“There’s also the number of Virtual Gods. The enemy has more than two million of them, while we only have a little over two hundred. Before the True God invaders arrived, Lin Huang and the others were still able to help out, but now they’re too busy taking care of themselves, so all we can do is face the enemy as one against ten thousand…” Guan Zhong felt completely hopeless about the outcome of this battle.

However, at this moment, Lin Huang suddenly made a move again.

Within the Void, a gigantic galactic hive—its size comparable to that of the moon—suddenly descended onto the battlefield.

The shape of this hive was like a rugby ball-shaped ellipsoid, standing upright in the Void more than ten meters off the ground. There were untold numbers of bottomless holes on its surface, which gave everyone goosebumps just by looking at it from afar.

The main reason Lin Huang summoned the hive was that there was too great a disparity in the number of Virtual Gods between them and the enemy, and the Sword Servants and summoning beasts were too busy dealing with their own true god-level opponents to help the Virtual Gods of the gravel world. Moreover, with the previous foretaste of the bug beasts being summoned, coupled with the pressure brought on by the number of invaders, everyone’s aversion to the Bug Tribe army should have been greatly reduced. Lin Huang felt that this was the perfect time to summon the Bug Tribe army.

Even so, most people were taken aback when they saw a galactic hive suddenly appear in the Void.

“The Bug Tribe?!”

“Where did this hive come from?!”

Just as the people of the gravel world were utterly confused, countless bug beasts swarmed out of the hive like an ocean wave, then flocked towards the spirit types and undying species…

Only at this moment did Lin Huang speak again.

“Don’t panic, everyone. I bought this galactic hive from the great world in preparation for this war in the gravel world.”

Lin Huang’s lie, naturally, was to appease everyone.

If he told everyone that this hive had long since been in his possession and that he had been raising a Bug Tribe army, it would inevitably make people wonder if he was secretly plotting something.

It was easier for people to accept that the hive was an existing treasure, bought at a high price solely for this war.

The most important thing was that everyone did not think that this hive could have been obtained from the gravel world, and its value was certainly high, so there was not much to doubt about Lin Huang’s words.

Within this galactic hive, in addition to the six Queen Mothers (two of them were Spider Empresses), there were also ten mythical-level incubators.

Originally, the majority of the Bug Tribe army—which comprised hundreds of millions of bug beasts—were either at imperial-level purple gold-rank or were Demigods. After returning to the gravel world, about three hundred thousand of them broke through to virtual god-level by evolving through mutual feeding within the hive. Furthermore, through Lin Huang’s hunting in the great world for the past year, he had obtained a large amount of Virtual God corpse materials, and the six Queen Mothers gave birth to a batch of virtual god-level Bug Tribe fighters. This led to the Bug Tribe army’s numbers reaching one million.

Within this Bug Tribe army of a million troops, most of them were beginner-stage Virtual Gods, but there were also more than twenty True Gods who were conceived by the six Queen Mothers, using True God corpses as the main material.

Lin Huang was not the slightest bit worried about the losses that the Bug Tribe might suffer in the war. As long as the bodies of the Bug Tribe fighters were not too damaged, they could still be reconstructed after death. At most, they would need to consume a bit more material and energy. For the Bug Tribe, almost all types of beast corpses could be used as incubation material. This was also one of the main reasons why the Bug Tribe was rampant in all the different great worlds.

After this battle, the number of Bug Tribe army members under Lin Huang’s command would only increase, not decrease.

As soon as the massive Bug Tribe army joined the battle, everyone from the gravel world suddenly felt that a huge burden was lifted off their shoulders.

The participation of more than twenty Bug Tribe True Gods in the battle slightly reduced the pressure on Bai and the others, but just barely. After all, the disparity in the number of True Gods between them and the enemy was still huge.

Fortunately, the True Gods that had been sent over were all fighting on their own with no cooperation among each other, which gave the Sword Servants and summoning beasts a chance to catch their breath.

Despite that, the invaders still had a huge advantage due to their sheer numbers. Even though the battle this round was temporarily at a stalemate, if this were to continue, defeat would only be a matter of time for the gravel world.

The great world, the Undead Dimension.

Teng Ran leaned back on the chair and sat cross-legged again.

More than a minute had passed since the True Gods from the Undead Dimension—nearly five thousand of them—had been teleported to the gravel world. In all thirty gateways, there was not a single one where a True God had been exterminated. This made him absolutely certain that there was nothing wrong with any of these thirty dimensional gateways.

“What is the situation on casualties for the True Gods?” Teng Ran asked as he swept his gaze over the thirty-plus Virtual Gods present.

Before teleportation commenced, all 37 True Gods, Teng Ran included, had marked the True Gods they had captured with life imprints. Whenever a marked monster died, however, the life imprint would automatically dissipate.

The snake-headed man standing off to one side did some calculations, and very quickly shared his results.

“The total number of low-rank True Gods was 2518, and 57 died. The total number of medium-ranks was 1819; 81 died. As for high ranks, the total number was 347, and 0 died.”

“Not a single one of the high-ranks died?!” Teng Ran lofted his brows upon hearing that, looking at the snake-headed man in astonishment.

“Yes, according to everyone’s feedback, none of the life imprints on the high-ranks have vanished.” The snake-headed man nodded.

“From the looks of things, there are two possibilities,” Teng Ran pondered for a moment before putting forward his inferences. “Either there are very few high-rank True Gods in the gravel world, or they are deliberately giving us the impression of being weak by not killing the high-rank True Gods.”

“I don’t think the latter is very likely,” the long-legged girl standing to one side could not help commenting, “If they were really trying to show that they’re weak, they could have done so more realistically and killed off a token few—that would have prevented us even more from discovering their ruse. If they didn’t kill any of them, I think it’s more likely that they simply don’t have the ability to defend against high-rank True Gods.”

“It’s also possible that the time is too short. After all, it’s less than two minutes since they teleported,” the snake-headed man off to the side added.

“Then when should we make our arrivals in the gravel world?” The long-legged girl glanced at the snake-headed man and asked.

“We’ll wait a little longer and see if the situation changes,” Teng Ran thought about it for a moment and gave his answer as such.

…

The gravel world, the Abyss Brink.

Lin Huang used Divine Telekinesis to control flying dagger after flying dagger, hemming the high-rank True Gods into one area to prevent them from interfering with other parts of the battleground. At the same time, he was monitoring the situation across the entire field of battle.

Without interference from the high-rank True Gods, the two hundred-over Sword Servants with their combat strength of sixth-rank True Gods were practically unstoppable on this medium-rank True God-level battleground.

If Lin Huang had not informed them in advance to slow down the speed of the massacre to avoid the great world detecting any anomalies, it would have taken merely the work of two minutes for the number of slaughtered True Gods to reach almost a thousand.

Currently, the Sword Servants were taking it easy. Although they were fewer in number than the invaders by far, they were all practicing their sword skills and were comfortable with their unsealed combat strength. If not for the very beginning when they had used too much force, the number of medium-rank True Gods they had killed could still have been reduced to half of what they had slaughtered now.

Over at the low-rank True Gods’ battleground, Ku Rong and Bai dominated the wave of battle even though they were fourth-rank.

Although their numbers were considerably less compared to their opponents, the imperial monsters were all at third and fourth-rank, so there was not much in the way of pressure. Moreover, under Lin Huang’s directive, their main mission was not to kill the enemy but to control the battlefield and prevent these True Gods from drifting into the Virtual God battlefield.

On the virtual god-level battlefield, there were now millions of bug beasts that had joined the fight. This considerably eased the pressure on the many Virtual Gods of the gravel world.

In contrast to the Abyssal creatures, undying species, and spirit types who were fighting individual battles, the Bug Tribe fighters demonstrated amazing tactics and cooperation. The degree of tacit understanding between them was even greater than the results of long-term drills carried out by the major organizations of the gravel world.

Under the six Queen Mothers’ tactical grandmaster-level commands, the Bug Tribe fighters transformed into small platoons of vanguards, quickly defeating group after group of invaders.

The major organizations of the gravel world also played their trump cards.

What surprised Lin Huang most was that the Union Government’s trump card turned out to be clones of 3,000 Virtual Gods.

Among them were a thousand individuals who looked exactly like Lin Xuan, and these thousand had the highest level of combat strength—they were all Virtual God rank-9s.

The other two thousand individuals were 1,000 clones each of a man and a woman. Their combat levels were Virtual God rank-3 and Virtual God rank-6.

The minute Lin Huang saw this, he knew the Union Government was the organization that had initially created Lin Xuan.

Although he harbored considerable doubts in his heart, he temporarily suppressed them.

Thanks to the addition of the Bug Tribe and all the major organizations playing their trump cards, the number of Virtual God invaders was dropping sharply. Almost every minute, tens of thousands of them died.

In contrast, the number of casualties in the gravel world was much smaller because almost all the fighting was done in small squads. Occasionally, if someone slipped up, someone else would immediately fill in for them. Mr. Fu, Lin Xuan, and several Virtual God rank-9s all carried out their respective parts with ease and skill while keeping an eye on the battlefield situation.

…

It was while the battle was still in full swing that a Sword Servant on the roof of an independent courtyard in Dynasty’s gravel world headquarters suddenly opened his eyes and looked down through the tiles of the house.

He sensed that the woman he had been guarding for more than half a year had finally awakened today.

In the room, Lin Xin slowly opened her eyes.

She herself did not know how long she had been in closed-door cultivation this round. Every time she finished eating a Godhead, she automatically entered a state of cultivation. When she woke up, her combat strength would have increased a rank. She then consumed another Godhead and entered a state of cultivation again. She had done so repeatedly…

This had continued until this last round when she had swallowed nine Virtual God rank-9 Godheads. It was not until today that she had emerged from her state of cultivation.

“I’ve advanced to Virtual God rank-9?” Lin Xin checked her body, feeling the surge of the massive Divine Power within her. There was also a Godhead within her that looked like a black hole; only then was she able to confirm that her combat strength truly had advanced to Virtual God rank-9.

“I don’t know how long I was in closed-door cultivation this time, but my brother will definitely be pleasantly surprised when he sees my combat level! When Mr. Fu finds out, I’m sure he’ll get a shock…and I’m certain I’m more powerful than Brother Xiao Mo!”

Lin Xin opened the door and walked out in a happy mood.

“Miss Xin Er.” A figure suddenly appeared in front of Lin Xin and bowed to her in respect.

“And you are…?” Lin Xin was startled. What she found more extraordinary was that she had not even sensed the other party’s approach.

“I am a Sword Servant under the command of the Emperor, and I have been responsible for guarding Miss Xin Er during this period of closed-door cultivation,” Sword106 replied.

“Oh I see—thank you so much for your efforts all this time!” Lin Xin quickly thanked Sword106, “May I ask, how long have I been in closed-door cultivation?”

“A total of 198 days,” Sword106 remembered very distinctly.

“198 days? More than half a year?!” Lin Xin exclaimed in amazement. She had not expected her closed-door cultivation to have lasted for so long. Her previous closed-door cultivations had never lasted for more than a month.

In some disbelief, Lin Xin clicked on the calendar of the Emperor’s Heart Ring and exclaimed again in astonishment.

“Today is October 23rd?!”

After confirming that it had been indeed more than half a year since she went into closed-door cultivation, Lin Xin still found it difficult to believe, but she soon accepted this as fact.

She made a sweep with Divine Telekinesis, trying to probe for traces of Lin Huang, but found nothing. What surprised Lin Xin even more was that in all of Dynasty, out of all their powerhouses, only Huang Tianfu and Xiao Mo remained here.

Not only were Lin Huang and Mr. Fu not around, but even Huang Baiyu and the others who had been guarding Dynasty’s headquarters all along were gone as well.

“Where’s my brother and Mr. Fu?” As Lin Xin asked this question, in her heart she already had a vague inkling of the answer.

“They’ve all gone to the Abyss Brink,” Sword106 explained briefly, “The invasion from the great world started nine days ago.”

“The invasion war has begun?! What’s the situation now?” Lin Xin asked hurriedly.

“That, I don’t know—you will have to ask Huang Tianfu.” As soon as Sword106 finished his speaking, Huang Tianfu had already appeared at the courtyard gate with Xiao Mo beside him.

Xiao Mo’s face betrayed his astonishment when he sensed Lin Xin’s aura.

Huang Tianfu was also obviously taken aback, but he immediately came to his senses.”I will go into details of the situation in the Abyss Brink later with you, my lady Virgen. Before that, there are some matters that His Majesty asked me to explain to you…”

“Let’s talk inside then.” Lin Xin nodded and ushered the three of them into the room…

On the third layer of the Abyss Brink, most of the areas had been reduced to battlegrounds, but there was a clear distinction between each of the battlefields.

The Virtual God area was led by Virtual God rank-9s such as Mr. Fu and Lin Xuan, and the Bug Tribe fighters were the main army of resistance. With the largest number of people and the smallest disparity in terms of numbers, the battle in this area appeared to be the most intense.

The battlefield of the True Gods was subdivided into three parts.

Low-rank True Gods were led by the summoning beasts and God’s Figurine’s Combat Souls under Lin Huang’s command. The numbers on this battlefield had the widest disparity between parties, but this was the battle zone that Lin Huang was least worried about.

His God Territory had been quietly spread out from early on, and within the range of his Monster Paradise, the imperial monster cards could be resurrected.

As for the God’s Figurine’s Combat Souls, they were corpses, to begin with. As long as the spiritual power that propelled them was not dispersed, they would not die at all. Even if their physical bodies were severely damaged and could not continue fighting, they would be fully restored within 24 hours after being thrown into the Bug Tribe’s Restorative Pod for a while.

As far as the medium-rank True God battlefield was concerned, Lin Huang was not worried in the least.

Although the number of Sword Servants was only one-seventh that of the invaders, the Sword Servants were all sixth-rank True Gods, and their abilities were almost at the level of seventh-rank True Gods. Dealing with a disorganized, undisciplined group of spirit types and undying species of fourth to sixth-rank was not a problem.

If Lin Huang had not given prior instructions, the invaders on this battlefield would have already been slaughtered by the Sword Servants in the last ten minutes.

As for the battlefield of the high-rank True Gods, Lin Huang single-handedly controlled this area.

Of the several hundred telekinetic flying daggers that had evolved from Lin Huang’s God Weapon, one was assigned to each intruder. From the time the group of invaders had teleported over until now, they had been entangled non-stop by these telekinetic flying daggers.

If they were even slightly careless, the invaders’ bodies would get stabbed full of holes.

Like a game between cats and mice, the telekinetic flying daggers cordoned off a group of high-rank True Gods in a specific area. The True Gods could not escape even if they wanted to, let alone interfere with other battlefields.

As Lin Huang was happily relishing the control that he had over the battlefield here, he suddenly sensed that reinforcements were coming from the third layer of the Abyss Brink.

Only after a sweep of Divine Telekinesis did he discover that it was Lin Xin and Xiao Mo. There was another person with them who looked familiar. Lin Huang recognized that it was the Sword Servant who had guarded Lin Xin during her closed-door cultivation but he could not remember his identity number.

However, after his Divine Telekinesis sweep, Lin Huang was taken aback.

This was because he realized that Lin Xin’s combat strength had already reached Virtual God rank-9, which was three ranks higher than himself.

‘This girl’s constitution is really enviable.’ Huang was speechless. He had desperately hunted for various resources and only now was he able to reach Virtual God rank-6. In the gravel world, there was no way for him to progress any further.

However, Lin Xin had merely relied on consuming Godheads, and in just over six short months, she had advanced nine ranks up from imperial-level purple gold-rank, one after the other, to her current Virtual God rank-9. It seemed far too easy!

Conversely, a look at Xiao Mo who was beside her revealed that although he had been in closed-door cultivation for several months, his combat strength had not changed much.

However, Lin Huang noticed that Xiao Mo emanated Rule Bending Power fluctuations, and vaguely sensed that it was wind attribute Elemental Enlightenment.

Obviously, even though Xiao Mo’s combat strength had not improved in the past few months, his ability was no longer what it used to be. Right now, even if he encountered a high-rank Virtual God, he should have the power to put up a fight. Of course, this was based on the premise that his opponent had not mastered Rule Bending Power.

Xiao Mo’s potential definitely exceeded Lin Huang’s expectations as Xiao Mo was able to master Rule Bending Power while still a Virtual God rank-3.

Lin Huang withdrew his Divine Telekinesis, and less than half a minute later, Lin Xin and the others entered the field of battle.

“Brother!”

From quite a distance away, Lin Xin had also noticed Lin Huang.

She had been in closed-door cultivation for more than half a year, which meant that she had not seen Lin Huang in more than six months.

“You’ve come.” Lin Huang nodded slightly and acknowledged her.

Despite controlling the battlefield with hundreds of telekinetic threads, this did not affect him having a conversation with people at all.

Lin Xin had planned to show off her cultivation results immediately the moment she saw Lin Huang. However, she noticed that Lin Huang was in battle mode and she did not dare interrupt him.

She was on the verge of saying, “Brother, my combat level has advanced to Virtual God rank-9!” but she stubbornly refrained.

Instead, Lin Huang took the initiative and brought it up.

“The results of your six months of closed-door cultivation are really quite remarkable; you’ve reached Virtual God rank-9!”

When she heard Lin Huang reveal her combat level, Lin Xin immediately felt elated and blurted out what was on her mind, “Brother, I want to join the battle too!”

Lin Huang nodded. “Alright, go to the Virtual God battlefield then.”

Lin Huang agreed because Lin Xin now had the ability to protect herself. As long as she did not encounter any True Gods, with her current combat level, not many people could fight her head-on.

In addition, Mr. Fu was also on the Virtual God battlefield, along with Lin Xuan and the others, and they would always monitor Lin Xin’s situation. Therefore, Lin Huang was not worried at all. Besides, his little sister really needed some opportunities for actual combat.

Lin Xin had not expected Lin Huang to agree to her request so easily.

Before she came to the Abyss Brink, she had prepared several sets of rhetoric to try and persuade her brother to let her participate in the battle.

However, Lin Huang had agreed immediately without her even needing to bring any of it up. She was instantly ecstatic.

“Thank you, brother!”

As soon as she finished speaking, she left Xiao Mo immediately and went straight to the battlefield where Mr. Fu and Lin Xuan were.

“Your Majesty, I’ll go to the Virtual God battlefield too then,” Xiao Mo said quickly as well.

“Go ahead. With your current ability, you’ll have no trouble protecting yourself.” Lin Huang nodded.

Xiao Mo had a moment of slight bafflement. Although he knew that his ability had improved, he did not know just how much it had improved. He was not even aware that the new ability he had mastered was a Rule Bending Power that only True Gods could master.

Watching the two of them join the Virtual God battlefield one after the other, it was a while before Lin Huang shifted his gaze to the Sword Servant who had just arrived.

“Thank you for your efforts for the past half a year—you’ve guarded Xin Er’s closed-door cultivation every step of the way.”

“This is your humble servant’s duty,” Sword1061 bowed and said.

“Your identity number is…”

“Sword106.”

“Alright, I have it.” Lin Huang nodded slightly. “You may go to the battlefield then, Sword106.”

“Yes, your Majesty!” Sword106 bowed again. After getting up, his figure rose into the air and hurtled toward the middle-rank True God battlefield where the Sword Servants were.

After the Sword Servant had departed, Lin Huang returned his gaze to the area where the Virtual Gods were fighting.

Once on the battlefield, Lin Xin and Xiao Mo quickly entered battle mode.

Lin Xin wore silver armor and wielded a brace of pistols. Bullets flew forth furiously and each bullet penetrated through a monster’s head with great accuracy; the monster’s head then burst apart, rendering it a headless creature.

Her equipment had evolved from the God Weapons given to her by Lin Huang, and there were three pieces in total.

One piece had evolved into the suit of armor that she wore, one had evolved into a Hundred-Use Firearm, and the last had been transformed into a Spiritual God Weapon which guarded her spiritual dimension.

Not far from Lin Xin, Xiao Mo transformed into a black shadow and quickly shuttled back and forth through the battlefield. He did not have an accurate understanding of his current ability and the opponents he chose were all beginner-stage Virtual Gods. Between his attacks, one by one the beginner-stage Virtual God monsters were easily killed, and none of the monsters could so much as even touch the hem of his shirt…

On the Virtual God battlefield, Mr. Fu also noticed Lin Xin and Xiao Mo as they appeared on the scene.

Although Lin Huang had mentioned to him that Lin Xin’s constitution was special, Mr. Fu was still shocked when he saw that Lin Xin’s combat level had advanced to Virtual God rank-9.

One must know that Mr. Fu had been stuck at the stage of condensing his Godhead for more than 300 years. It had taken more than 700 years for him to advance from Virtual God rank-1 to Virtual God rank-8. However, it had taken Lin Xin only half a year to advance from Imperial-level purple gold-rank to Virtual God rank-9 in practically no time at all, which was far superior to his own ceaseless cultivation attempts.

Watching Lin Xin roaming the battlefield like a human gun turret, almost no monster could get within 20 meters of her.

Mr. Fu’s thoughts involuntarily turned to this girl’s older brother, and he could not help but turn his gaze toward the battlefield where the high-rank True Gods were.

That young man was suspended high in the air, looking down on the entire battlefield by himself. Directly below him, scarlet electric arcs kept flickering, and hundreds of high-rank True God monsters were forcibly trapped in the area enclosed by the arcs, unable to leave at all.

“Comparisons are odious.”

Mr. Fu could not help muttering in a low voice. Naturally, he knew that just on combat level alone, Lin Huang was only a Virtual God rank-6 at present, which was not even as good as Lin Xin—but Lin Huang’s power far exceeded his combat level.

The talent and potential of these two siblings made Mr. Fu envious.

Mr. Fu shifted his gaze from Lin Huang and turned to look at Xiao Mo, who had burst onto the battlefield with Lin Xin.

He knew that Xiao Mo had been in closed-door cultivation for several months, but from what he could see, it seemed that Xiao Mo’s combat level had not improved at all—the lad was still Virtual God rank-3.

In some puzzlement, Mr. Fu observed Xiao Mo for a while and soon noticed an anomaly.

“This boy, could it be that he’s mastered Rule Bending Power?”

Mr. Fu knew about the existence of Rule Bending Power. In fact, he had been trying to master Rule Bending Power for more than a year since advancing to Virtual God rank-9, but he had not gotten anywhere with it so far.

After watching Xiao Mo easily shuttling to and fro on the battlefield to the point where even some high-level Virtual Gods could not take a shot at him, after some thought, Mr. Fu realized that Xiao Mo could probably only do that if he had mastered Rule Bending Power.

However, what made Mr. Fu so angry and amused at the same time was that Xiao Mo did not even know that his abilities had improved by leaps and bounds. All his attacks were targeted at beginner-stage Virtual Gods. He would just avoid any intermediate stage to high-level Virtual Gods, slipping away even more adroitly than a mud fish.

“He’s only Virtual God rank-3 and he’s mastered Rule Bending Power—that’s really enviable.” Mr. Fu, who had always felt that he was fairly talented, received a critical blow to his confidence a third time.

He even began to wonder if there were more geniuses in this era than in the old.

At this point in his thoughts, he used Divine Telekinesis and swept the perimeter, his gaze then shifting to Lin Xuan.

Mo Kui, his apprentice, was also one of the most amazing geniuses from the old era, and it took him more than 200 years of cultivation to advance from a mortal to virtual god-level. This kind of cultivation speed was now instantly overshadowed by Lin Huang and other present-day individuals.

However, after observing Lin Xuan for a moment, Mr. Fu’s jaw dropped in some astonishment. The original sword cultivator Mo Kui had now become a master of both sword and saber.

Lin Xuan wielded a saber in his left hand and a sword in his right. As he swung his weapons, he left behind a multitude of afterimages for both sword and saber in his wake, easily bisecting the corpses of the Virtual Gods as if he was slicing melons and vegetables.

What Mr. Fu did not know was that Lin Xuan was not only a master of swords and sabers but also a secondary cultivator in firearms. In terms of firearms ability alone, his skill was even higher than Lin Xin who was a Virtual God rank-9.

In addition, although Lin Xuan had not achieved True God status yet, he had already mastered six types of Rule Bending Power, and his overall ability was sufficient to go up against low-rank True Gods.

In fact, Lin Xuan and Mr. Fu had already noticed Lin Xin and Xiao Mo when they entered the third layer of the Abyss Brink.

Seeing Lin Xin, Lin Xuan’s mood underwent some obvious fluctuations.

In the early days when he became a member of Lin Huang’s family under the identity of Lin Xuan, he had spent most of his time with Lin Xin since Lin Huang was away from home quite a lot.

Before he came into contact with Lin Huang and Lin Xin, he was just the product of an experiment; no one had taught him how to get along with others. Most of this knowledge and subsequent life experiences, he learned through observing Lin Huang and Lin Xin.

Therefore, he had an ineffable bond with Lin Huang and Lin Xin.

In addition, Lin Huang had always been an independent character, and Lin Xin had always been in a position of being protected. His attachment to Lin Xin was even deeper than with Lin Huang, growing as it did out of his protective mindset.

Seeing Lin Xin in such close proximity again, Lin Xuan vaguely felt that he had gone back to four years ago where he was still part of Lin Huang and Lin Xin’s family.

However, he quickly became aware that Lin Xin did not recognize him.

It was not difficult for him to understand why this was so.

After all, over the past four years, he had changed greatly. Based on common sense, he should look like a 13 or 14 year old boy, but now, he looked at least 25 years old. Given that he looked only 60-70% like he did in the past, Lin Xin was unlikely to recognize him at a glance.

After observing in secret, Lin Xuan discovered that Lin Xin was no longer the little girl he knew four years ago.

He was a little puzzled by the fact that her combat level had already reached Virtual God rank-9. He decided to wait until the war had ended before asking Lin Huang what was going on.

Currently in terms of ability, Lin Xin was already the top powerhouse in the gravel world.

Her use of firearms was not very much weaker than Lin Xuan’s own abilities.

Lin Xuan felt gratified at this.

He still clearly remembered that Lin Xin often pestered him to guide her on firearms practice four years ago. She had said that she wanted to master firearms well and get admitted to the Martial Hunter College so that after graduation, she could help her brother shoulder part of the pressure.

The Lin Xin of today had done everything that she had aimed for previously.

…

Lin Xin had no idea that she was being observed.

Her current combat strength was already Virtual God rank-9, but the battle before her right now was the first one she had participated in since she had advanced to virtual god-level.

This was also officially the first time that the God Weapons Lin Huang had given her were being put to use since being activated.

She had a good mental attitude—she did not regard this as a war, but as a practical combat exercise.

She wielded a firearm in each hand, one silver and one black—one utilizing rapid speed sword skill and the other utilizing force-type. The bullets spewed out furiously like tongues of flame; almost every bullet could blow apart a head.

As the artillery fire provided catharsis, her mood became more and more cheerful. She was constantly familiarising herself with this body that was countless times stronger than before, and her hands could barely feel the recoil of the guns. Many moves that she could not do before, she could now perform.

Not only that, almost every time that she took a shot, she progressed just a bit further in the use of virtual god-level Divine Power.

She became more comfortable and familiar on the battlefield, like a natural Combat Goddess…

More than half an hour had passed since the captive monsters from the Undead Dimension had been teleported to the gravel world. Teng Ran, who had been dozing on his chair with his legs crossed in front of him, finally opened his eyes and looked at the snake-headed monster beside him.

“What is the situation now?”

“1524 low-rank True Gods died, with 994 remaining; 1151 casualties for medium-ranks, with 668 remaining; 7 casualties for high-ranks, with 340 remaining,” the snake-headed man finished sharing the data and continued, “Our opponents should have expended quite a lot of manpower; the number of our True Gods dying every minute is decreasing.”

“This is good news, isn’t it? It means that the number of True Gods on our opponents’ side is decreasing,” Teng Ran commented, lifting his brows.

The snake-headed man hesitated but added nonetheless, “However, the speed of the Virtual Gods dying has not slowed down; in fact, it’s marginally increasing slowly…”

“Is it possible that they were affected by the battle of the True Gods, so more Virtual Gods died?” The long-legged girl off to the side asked.

“This is also a possibility.” The snake-headed man nodded. “As the number of True Gods on our opponents’ side declines, it’s possible that these True Gods will completely put aside their apprehensions and fight to the death. If that’s the case, more Virtual Gods will certainly be affected than before.”

After the snake-headed man finished speaking, he added, “But this is just speculation. Only those on the battlefield would know what the exact situation is like.”

“No matter what, you have an explanation for everything,” the long-legged girl commented, curling her lips.

“Enough, stop fighting.” Teng Ran waved his hand. “Prepare to descend!”

“Sect Leader sir, I think we can wait a little longer.” The snake-headed man hurriedly stopped him. “Although the number of casualties for the True Gods has slowed down, it has not stopped entirely. That means that there should still be quite a number of True Gods guarding the gravel world.”

“So we wait for the undying species and spirit type True Gods to stop dying completely, then go clean up the aftermath—you’re so idealistic.” The long-legged girl began shaming the snake-headed man again. “Have you ever considered that if these uncontrolled undying species and spirit types stay in the gravel world for just a fraction longer, they could cause the death of hundreds of millions of non-cultivators?! The more losses suffered by the basic population of the gravel world, the further delayed the next cultivation era will be. Our harvesting of resources will also have to be postponed!”

The snake-headed man was rendered speechless and unable to refute her arguments.

Teng Ran, who was beside them, was distracted for a moment; whether it was due to overhearing these words or for some other reason was uncertain. When he returned to his senses, he nodded immediately. “This time the girl is right, we can’t wait any longer!”

“But what if this is a trap? What if they’re deliberately slowing down the slaughter of the True Gods to bait us?” The snake-headed man raised the biggest worry in his heart.

“So what if it’s a trap?!”

Teng Ran stood up, set aside the chair behind him, and looked at the snake-headed man with burning eyes.

“It’s impossible for a Heavenly God to go to the gravel world. Not only that, but I have also mastered thirty-six Strength Rules. Among True Gods, besides the top few, who can challenge me?!

“What do you think is the probability of peak True God powerhouses appearing in this part of the gravel world?!”

After hearing this, the snake-headed man fell completely silent.

It was not that he did not know the abilities of his Sect Leader, but all along it had been his cautious character that had allowed him to stay alive up to this point. Upon careful consideration now, however, his worries were indeed a bit redundant.

Sect Leader Teng Ran’s abilities were indeed in the top tier among True Gods of the God Territory. Below heavenly god-level, except for a few monster-level fellows who could not afford to be provoked, there was really no need to worry about anyone else.

In this area of the gravel world, the possibility of encountering such a monster was almost zero.

After thinking about this, the snake-headed man finally abandoned his attempts to discourage Teng Ran.

“Get ready for now; later we will teleport through the thirty gateways confirmed to be safe!” Seeing that the snake-headed man did not refute this, Teng Ran immediately gave an order, which was passed along to the rest.

A short while later, Teng Ran took the numerous Virtual Gods and True Gods present, divided them into thirty teams, and stepped into the dimensional gateway…

…

In the Abyss Brink, Lin Huang had instructed the Sword Servants and summoning beasts to control the speed of their slaughter.

He himself had killed seven high-rank True Gods, but this was not done deliberately. This came about purely because these seven monsters had violent tempers and were eager to break free from telekinetic flying daggers entangling them, resulting in too many wounds on their bodies. They all ended up severely injuring themselves and died.

Lin Huang had controlled the tempo of battle on this field for over half an hour before another wave of spatial fluctuations was transmitted from the space rifts.

As they sensed these spatial fluctuations, everyone in battle could not help being a little distracted.

The expressions on the faces of every individual in the gravel world were not pleasant to look upon.

Although both warring parties had entered a stalemate, the enemy wielded a numerical advantage. The True God battlefield that Lin Huang was leading had been suppressed at every turn and was now forced to fall back on passive defense.

On the Virtual God battlefield, although the gravel world currently had the advantage, it was only marginal.

After half an hour, the enemy returned with reinforcements and obviously came prepared.

The situation was not optimistic!

Dongfang Bai could not help asking Lin Huang via voice transmission, “Now the enemy is arriving with reinforcements again; what should we do?!”

“What can we do? We can’t block the dimensional gateways,” Lin Huang responded with a smile.

“What I mean is, do you have any trump cards on your end that can handle this batch of reinforcements?” Dongfang Bai also vaguely observed that Lin Huang’s attitude was not indicat

ive of worry.

“Yes,” Lin Huang merely replied with a single word and gave no further explanation.

Dongfang Bai still wanted to inquire further, but after careful consideration, he abandoned this intention. Lin Huang’s answer just now made it clear that he did not want to explain anymore.

In fact, while Dongfang Bai was asking Lin Huang these questions, Mr. Fu, Lin Xuan, Lin Xin, and Xiao Mo were all asking Lin Huang similar questions. That was why he was too lazy to waste more words in explanation.

Once he had dealt with the various questions of these individuals, Lin Huang turned his head and looked toward the space rifts. He sensed that the spatial fluctuations in all thirty rifts were getting increasingly stronger. The corners of his lips could not help curving up slightly. “They’re finally coming!”

Of course, he knew that the ones who had waited half an hour before leisurely arriving should be the masterminds behind this invasion of the gravel world.

In only half an hour, it was impossible for this group of individuals to round up another lot of undying species and spirit types again as there was not enough time. Therefore, this wave of newcomers could only be the actual invaders.

Lin Huang stared at the dimensional gateway fixedly, impatiently waiting for the enemy to arrive. He deliberately ordered Bai, the Sword Servants, and the others to slow down their slaughter of True Gods in order to draw these invaders out.

This goal had now been finally achieved!

In just a few moments, the spatial fluctuations of all thirty space rifts reached their peak. After that, tens of thousands of figures poured through almost simultaneously!

Lin Huang made a sweep with Divine Telekinesis and instantly locked onto the handful of thirty-seven True Gods. Upon his first glimpse of Teng Ran and the several other ninth-rank True Gods, he flashed a cordial grin.

“Welcome on your arrival in our world!”

The instant he led the army over, Teng Ran immediately made a sweep with his Divine Telekinesis. He wanted to see for himself firsthand what kind of enemy he was dealing with.

After scanning his surroundings with Divine Telekinesis, he was able to see an enormous hive and a Bug Tribe army that numbered practically millions. Teng Ran could not help being slightly stunned.

“The Bug Tribe?!”

For a brief moment, the thought that perhaps the gravel world had been secretly occupied by the Bug Tribe even crossed his mind.

However, he quickly discarded this thought the next second when his Divine Telekinesis picked up that apart from the Bug Tribe, humans and other Protoss were attacking the spirit types and undying species too.

“What’s going on?!”

Teng Ran’s mind experienced a brief moment of confusion. Even after scanning his surroundings with Divine Telekinesis, he still could not make head or tail of what kind of site he was dealing with.

Was he up against the Bug Tribe, Protoss, or humans?!

Fortunately, what allowed him to breathe a slight sigh of relief was that he discovered the numbers on his side far exceeded those of his opponent.

Not only were there more Virtual Gods on Teng Ran’s side but the number of True Gods he had with him far exceeded those on the enemy’s side. In fact, the number of True Gods in Teng Ran’s army was at least ten times greater than that of his enemy. Most importantly, he detected not a single hint of high-rank True God aura within his enemy’s site.

Just when Teng Ran thought victory was already at hand, he suddenly realized that the hundreds of high-rank true god-level undying species and spirit types that he had sent over previously were all holed up in a small, narrow area.

Fixing his eyes on that spot, he noticed red gleams that flickered like lightning as they entangled themselves with all of the high-rank True Gods, rendering the True Gods unable to escape.

“Are those… telekinetic flying daggers?!”

A good look at the telekinetic flying daggers and how they kept hundreds of high-rank True Gods in check like puppets caused Teng Ran to feel a chill down his spine.

It was at this moment that he finally noticed an individual hovering in the air over the area where the high-rank True Gods were imprisoned.

It was a young man who peered down at Teng Ran from above. A teasing curve played about the corners of the young man’s lips as he suddenly uttered casually, “Welcome on your arrival in our world!”

In that instant, Teng Ran understood—this was his enemy’s painstakingly calculated scenario.

Following Lin Huang’s booming voice, nearly all of the invaders mentally reached the same conclusion.

Suddenly, a voice broke the spell that paralyzed the army.

“This fellow’s just bluffing—he’s only a Virtual God!” Unexpectedly, the voice belonged to the young lady with long legs.

Hearing that, Teng Ran came to his senses and used his Divine Telekinesis on Lin Huang. The information that he obtained said that Lin Huang’s combat strength was only Virtual God rank-6.

‘Perhaps he’s not the person controlling the telekinetic flying daggers?!’ An idea occurred to Teng Ran.

As Teng Ran readied to make a large-scale sweep with his Divine Telekinesis in his search for the powerhouse who controlled the telekinetic flying daggers, he felt an aura locking down on him.

An instant later, a flicker of a blood-red gleam shot through the air at him like a flash of lightning.

Teng Ran hastily dodged the attack. Before forming a conclusive understanding of his enemy’s strength, he did not dare to be rash and allow himself to be hit.

While he twisted his body aside to dodge the attack, he noticed from the corner of his eyes that he was not the only person who had been attacked. The snake-headed man, the long-legged young lady, and some others were also forced to dodge and flee.

‘Is he targeting all the high-rank True Gods?!’ A glance and Teng Ran understood what had happened.

All thirty-seven high-rank True Gods were the only ones to be targeted while other medium and low-rank True Gods, as well as Virtual Gods, were spared from the attack.

Teng Ran had no time to mull over whether his enemy was disdainful of them or lacking in strength; he sent his Divine Telekinesis sweeping across the area to find the mastermind.

It only took his Divine Telekinesis a short while to sweep across the whole third layer of the Abyss Brink but it came up with nothing.

“Did any of you see where the telekinetic flying daggers came from just now?”

Teng Ran asked the other thirty-six True Gods simultaneously through voice transmission.

Most of the replies were, “It was too fast, I couldn’t see clearly.”

However, a small number of people replied, “It seemed to have originated from that area where the high-rank True Gods are.”

Only the long-legged lady hesitated for a while before answering. “I think it came from that Virtual God, but I’m not so sure.”

In reality, she had briefly observed the flash of a red gleam from Lin Huang’s sleeves. She was just in denial of the fact.

“Did you see it clearly?” Teng Ran asked urgently.

“I’m not very sure. I think I saw a flash of a red gleam from his sleeves just now, but I could be wrong,” said the long-legged lady while shaking her head.

“Forget it. No matter if he’s the culprit behind it or not; we’ll take care of him first before we pursue this matter!” Teng Ran immediately fixed his gaze on Lin Huang who stood quite some distance away.

Teng Ran temporarily abandoned his attempts to discover the wielder of those flying daggers and locked on his new target—Lin Huang. Although Lin Huang was not even a True God, he had given Teng Ran a sense of unease since the beginning.

‘Pretty quick reaction.’ The instant Lin Huang felt Teng Ran locking onto him with his aura, he also sensed that the strength of this man’s aura was the highest among all the invaders. Yet, Lin Huang felt not the slightest hint of panic.

However, Lin Huang’s gaze quickly passed over Teng Ran and landed on the long-legged young lady standing not far from Teng Ran.

Teng Ran failed to notice this. His legs exerted tremendous force as he used the void as a stepping stone and abruptly began skyrocketing upward, charging toward Lin Huang.

Lin Huang did nothing to block this attack. He merely gave Teng Ran an indifferent glance and allowed Teng Ran to charge forward.

Teng Ran whirled the spear he held; like a descending meteor shower, the spearhead struck out to attack.

Yet, Lin Huang merely took a single step forward and his figure vanished on the spot.

Right in the midst of his astonishment, Teng Ran suddenly found himself falling into the center of the amassed high-rank true god-level undying species and spirit types.

Everyone who witnessed this scene was flabbergasted.

This was because, from their viewpoint, they only saw Teng Ran, spear in his hand, ignoring Lin Huang who hovered above him. Then, Teng Ran plunged straight into the area below, where all the high-rank True Gods were gathered.

Only a small number of individuals began observing Lin Huang with a weightier gaze. They roughly guessed that Teng Ran must have fallen prey to an illusion-type rule power.

The fact that Teng Ran’s opponent was able to so subtly cause Teng Ran to fall prey to an illusion was proof enough that the enemy had reached a terrifying level of rule power.

“What kind of existing being have we offended now…?”

The long-legged young lady could not help feeling a sudden chill.

Initially, when she noticed that Lin Huang was merely a Virtual God rank-6, she thought that he was just bluffing. Now, it appeared that he must have faked his combat strength.

Whether it was his telekinetic daggers or his control over Teng Ran just now, it was more than enough proof that his real power was close to that of a Heavenly God.

Lin Huang was either the creme de la creme among the True God monsters or a Heavenly God who had entered the gravel world through some special method.

There was no third possibility!

‘Why would there be someone like this in this part of the gravel world?!’

After discovering Lin Huang’s true strength, a multitude of thoughts began churning inside the long-legged young lady’s head.

Amid her convoluted thoughts, while she was still trying to get a handle on the situation, she abruptly discovered that a figure had suddenly appeared in front of her.

As she raised her head and looked straight at the other’s face, her body froze instantly. All thoughts of escape died completely!

“Don’t panic, I just want to ask you something.”

Lin Huang’s magnetic voice drifted into the young lady’s ears like a lullaby. His eyes, deep as a fathomless lake, drew the young lady in. She sank further and further down into their depths…

The long-legged young lady stood immobile with her guard down, staring blankly at Lin Huang as if she had lost her soul…