MONSTER PARADISE

1481 - 1500

As Lin Huang faced the three monsters, he was not planning on holding back anymore.

Since the aberrant species from before was a sword cultivator, he had spent more time on it because he was thinking in terms of a sword cultivator improving his skills. Of course, no one knew what the aberrant species might have been thinking.

However, this time, none of the three monsters were sword cultivators, and Lin Huang only needed one last Divine Fire before he successfully retired from the battleground. Naturally, there was no need to waste any more time.

The blood-red battle sword made a series of horizontal slashes, and three brilliant rays of scarlet light as bright as the noonday sun suddenly lit up, instantly illuminating the dim world into blood-red day.

When the three monsters saw the blood-red suns rising, their expressions immediately changed dramatically.

They had initially thought that Lin Huang’s final slash when killing the aberrant species was his final move. They had not expected that he might not have unleashed his full power in the earlier battle. These three seemingly casual slashes looked several times more powerful than the previous one.

Lin Huang had compounded forty Control-level Rule Bending Powers onto the three slashes and integrated them with True Self Level Sword Dao as he made his attacks.

Rule compounding power was not simply adding on in terms of numbers. With each Rule that was compounded, the power of Lin Huang’s sword increased by leaps and bounds. When he killed the aberrant species, he had only compounded twenty-eight layers of Rule Bending Power. Right now, compared to previously, the power of his current three slashes was twelve times the strength of his earlier slash.

The three monsters had initially thought that this was going to be an easy win; it had never crossed their minds that they might be serving themselves up as easy meat.

“We’re going to die! We’re going to die! We’re going to die…” The demon baby shrieked in a strange voice, flapping its so-called wings and fleeing the scene at a frightening speed.

However, as fast as he was, he could not outrun the speed of the blood-red sun’s rays. Under the brilliant blood-red beams that illuminated the entire sky, the various shapes and sizes of arms that made up its wings melted swiftly at a speed visible to the naked eye, like ice melting under the hot summer sun. They melted together with its body…

“Don’t kill me, I surrender…” The nine-headed ape yelped dismally as he frantically fled.

It used its nine pairs of upper and lower limbs together. Every time it used the void as a stepping stone and jumped, it traveled a certain distance like a flash in space. It was as fast as the demon baby with wings.

However, its escape was still in vain. The blood-red rays quickly melted its limbs and head like a lighted candle.

Of the three monsters, only the blackscale monster did not try to escape.

Instead, the black scales all over its body stacked up in front of it, turning into a pitch-black shield.

Only now did Lin Huang notice that its scales were actually a kind of liquified black crystal. Not only could the black crystal absorb energy, but it also reflected and refracted energy.

At least fifty percent of the power from Lin Huang’s blow was deflected by it.

It was then Lin Huang finally saw the monster’s figure, sans the covering of black scales.

It was a well-built human male who appeared to be around forty years old. Except for its completely jet-black eyes that were without whites, it was almost no different from a human being.

After being besieged by the blood-red sword gleams for about ten seconds, the shield created by the black scales finally could not withstand the energy impact and retreated back within the body of the middle-aged man.

The middle-aged man violently spat out a mouthful of fresh blood, and his entire body was sent flying backward.

Lin Huang noticed that the man’s body had not completely melted away; it was merely in the condition that it would be in the aftermath of an extremely high-temperature inferno.

“A combat cultivator?!” Lin Huang could not help but raise his brows. When this monster was still a human being, he had probably been an extremely powerful combat cultivator.

However, the fact that he was able to survive was not entirely due to his strong physical body, but also because the black scales integrated into his muscles and bones after retreating into his body, taking at least half the subsequent impact from the blood-red rays.

Even so, at a glance, Lin Huang guessed that the combat cultivator’s physical strength was probably close to that of a first-rank Heavenly God. Otherwise, he would not have been able to withstand the power of Lin Huang’s assault.

The three slashes killed two of the monsters within seconds, and although one was not dead yet, it had completely lost its ability to fight.

When Lin Huang glanced toward the blackscale monster in the distance whose Divine Power had been completely exhausted, his expression suddenly changed to one of slight puzzlement.

This was because he sensed that the Divine Fires within the bodies of the two slain monsters had all been absorbed by his Life Wheels.

“What’s going on? Why did they absorb eleven Divine Fires?!”

According to his previous experiences from Virtual God rank-1 to Virtual God rank-8, every transition of rank would only allow absorption of ten True God Divine Fires. Virtual God rank-9 should have been no exception.

However, his Life Wheels seemed to have absorbed an eleventh ninth-rank Divine Fire; this was entirely unexpected.

However, his doubts only lasted for a moment. Lin Huang then turned his gaze in the direction of the blackscale monster again.

“Since I can absorb more, then I’ll continue hunting until my Life Wheel stops absorbing!”

He did not bother racking his brain any further over what might have caused this change.

His figure flickered, and he appeared beside the blackscale monster—more precisely, beside the naked middle-aged man whose body had entirely cast off its black scales.

“Your consciousness seems to have preserved its state of awareness, which is rare among polluted individuals.” While Lin Huang carefully scrutinized his opponent, his Divine Telekinesis also made a sweep of the other’s body. “It seems to be in an unusual state of symbiosis…”

After studying the blackscale monster, Lin Huang did not spare it. He raised his sword and beheaded his opponent right away.

“Congratulations to the host on obtaining the entire monster card set for the Symbiotic Creature of the Abyssal Fountain (Supreme God)”

“I obtained a complete monster card set?!” Lin Huang immediately took out the card to check it.

“Monster Card: Symbiotic Creature of the Abyssal Fountain”

“Rarity: Supreme God”

“Monster name: Blackscale”

“Type of Monster: Unique Species / Unknown Tribe”

“Bloodline: Golden Fountain (Unawakened)”

“Combat Level: Sixth-rank True God (Ninth-rank True God)”

“Major: Combat Cultivator, Parasitism, Water Elemental Enlightenment…”

“Major Skills: Immortal Being of the Cosmos…”

“Combat Dao: True Self Level”

“God Rule: Tenacious…”

“Summon Authority: Activated”

“Card Remarks: Trainable!”

“Remarks: An extremely rare and unusual symbiotic creature type!”

“Even Xiao Hei thinks it’s rare?!” Lin Huang glanced through the card information and quickly noticed the final remarks. This was the first time Xiao Hei had specifically emphasized that a card monster was rare.

“Xiao Hei, do you have any suggestions about how its training direction should go?” Lin Huang asked immediately.

“There is insufficient information; it is not possible to give training suggestions .”

Xiao Hei’s answer also surprised Lin Huang a little.

“Alright.” Lin Huang did not bother to pursue the matter further. For him, obtaining this supreme god-level monster card was already an unexpected thrill.

He also noticed that after slaying Blackscale, his own body had absorbed the monster’s Divine Fire. At that point, he had absorbed twelve ninth-rank Divine Fires into his body.

“I don’t know if I can continue absorbing…” Lin Huang felt a little helpless. He did not know what was going on with his body or why the absorption of ninth-rank Divine Fires did not seem to satiate his Life Wheels. “Whatever. I’ll just keep hunting until my Life Wheels refuse to absorb any more!”

Due to unknown reasons that allowed Lin Huang to continue absorbing Divine Fires, he had no choice but to change his itinerary and postpone his plan to leave the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss so he could continue hunting in the core layer.

The core layer was undoubtedly a good place—ninth-rank True Gods were everywhere.

It took Lin Huang less than half an hour to hunt down four more ninth-rank monsters.

After he killed the fourth one, his Life Wheels finally stopped absorbing Divine Fire

s.

“Are they saturated now?!” Lin Huang was puzzled as he sank his consciousness into his Life Wheels to check.

Among the ten Life Wheels, there were five with double-stacked ninth-rank Divine Fires and five Life Wheels with only single ones.

“What’s going on? Why didn’t these five Life Wheels absorb more?” Lin Huang looked doubtfully at the differences between the Divine Fires in the five Life Wheels. After a while, he finally discovered where the problem lay.

The five Life Wheels that contained two ninth-rank Divine Fires all had one rank-4 Divine Fire plus one rank-5 Divine Fire. The five rank-5 Divine Fires came from five monsters—the Demonic Buddhist Holy Son, the aberrant species, the nine-headed ape, the demon baby, and the Symbiotic Creature of the Abyssal Fountain.

The remaining five Life Wheels with only one ninth-rank Divine Fire only had rank-4 Divine Fires, not rank-5 Divine Fires.

“So the rank-4 Divine Fires are saturated, and only rank-5 Divine Fires will be absorbed?!”

With this speculation in mind, Lin Huang immediately knew what direction his next hunt should take.

He made a sweep with his Divine Telekinesis and began to lock in the locations of the strongest auras in the core layer one by one.

“I found one!” It only took a moment; he could not help quirking his lips slightly as he swiftly headed toward the figure.

However, he had not flown very far before the figure seemed to notice Lin Huang’s pursuit and began to flee quickly.

“Seems like someone saw me…” The corners of Lin Huang’s mouth turned up, and he pursued his prey even more hotly.

The two played cat and mouse for around ten minutes before Lin Huang finally caught up with the other party.

It was a monster with several dozen pairs of black wings, dressed in white, and wearing a silver mask. If one ignored the wings on its back, it looked just like a human being.

Before Lin Huang could make a move, the winged being voluntarily stopped, put the walking stick in its hand away, and said to Lin Huang, “I surrender! Don’t kill me!”

“You’re not weak. Why don’t you want to fight?” Lin Huang raised an eyebrow.

He did not attack immediately because, unlike the nine-headed ape who had begged for mercy, it did not try to provoke him, nor did it have any intention of doing anything.

“I saw your fight just now. I’m no match for you,” the winged being said frankly, “It’s meaningless to try and fight you.”

The winged being was even more alarmed that Lin Huang had caught up with it. One must know that up until this very day, it had depended on its exceptional speed in the core layer. If its best ability had been superseded by Lin Huang, it knew the disparity between its own abilities and Lin Huang’s was vast.

“Then give me a reason not to kill you.” Lin Huang smiled and looked at it.

“I am Shadow Wing. I’m very familiar with the core layer and can act as a guide for you.” The winged being bowed toward Lin Huang and then introduced itself.

“You don’t feel bad betraying your own kind?” Lin Huang sneered at this sort of behavior.

“You’re wrong about that.” Shadow Wing was not annoyed, merely smiled and corrected Lin Huang, “The Abyss has hundreds of millions of types of creatures, just like the human world has birds, quadrupeds, and insects. However, birds, quadrupeds, and insects are not the same as humans. The Abyss is the same. Except for my kin, there are very few allied tribes. The other tribes are not the same as ours, and some are even enemies to me. Therefore, it’s not a betrayal.”

Lin Huang did not refute its statement. Although he had never been to the actual Abyss, he knew that there were many types of Abyssal creatures, and the competition was extremely fierce. Moreover, he knew that there was no camaraderie to speak of between different tribes.

In addition to that, the winged being did not regard the other tribes in the Abyss as being of the same race as itself, which was normal.

After thinking for a moment, Lin Huang stated his request, “I don’t need a guide; I only need prey.

“As long as you help me find more than five prey as strong as you or stronger, I’ll let you go!” According to the map from Mysterious Item Pavilion, the entire surface layer of the core layer was as big as the surface areas of four Earths combined. With his Divine Telekinesis under extreme suppression, it would take Lin Huang some time to find five rank-5 targets.

If the winged being could help him find five suitable targets quickly, he had no qualms about letting it go.

After Shadow Wing heard Lin Huang’s request, the eyes behind its silver mask blinked twice. “It’s as easy as that?”

“You might not want to say that so soon.” Although the winged being agreed very quickly, Lin Huang did not fully believe that it was up to the task.

“I’ve been in the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss for more than ten years; it’s been more than three years since I entered this core layer. Anything else, I wouldn’t dare to say much, but as far as familiarity with the core layer goes, there aren’t very many people who know it better than I do.

“You want to hunt down rank-5 creatures—well, I happen to know a few hunting groups made up of rank-5 members. However, if you add them all up, there’s a lot more than five of them.” Shadow Wing chuckled.

“The whereabouts of the hunters aren’t fixed; what’s the use of knowing who the members of those teams are? Or is it possible that you can still ascertain their locations?” Lin Huang asked.

“Now, this is something you don’t know. In this core layer, there’s a place called the core source. It’s the place where the Abyssal energy is densest. Even peak True God powerhouses don’t dare to approach it willy-nilly. The core source is a place that churns out powerful Abyssal creatures continuously. The strongest teams in the core layer divide the vicinity of the core source into a few hunting grounds, and each of them occupies one part. As long as the members of these teams enter the core layer, they usually stay in their own part of the hunting grounds most of the time. Therefore, it won’t be difficult to find them.”

Lin Huang listened to Shadow Wing’s explanation and remembered that the map he obtained from Mysterious Item Pavilion had a large red shaded area without any descriptive text. He guessed this was most likely the location of the core source that Shadow Wing had mentioned.

He could not help but ask somewhat curiously, “Can the core source really churn out powerful Abyssal monsters from thin air?!”

“Yes.” Shadow Wing nodded. “No one knows the specific principles of it. Some say that there is a space tunnel deep in the core source that is connected to the deepest reaches of the Abyss. Others say that the core source is connected to a powerful internal Abyssal kingdom. Some also speculate that the entire core layer is a laboratory for a powerful entity in the Abyss…

“In fact, in addition to churning Abyssal creatures out of thin air, throwing any living or dead Abyssal creatures into the depths of the core source will also result in Abyssal energy infiltrating them, generating aberrant species, fallen species, undying species, or spirit types…

“The sword cultivator aberrant species you killed became what it was when it was initially forced into the depths of the core layer by a hunting team…” It seemed that Shadow Wing had been paying attention to Lin Huang since his battle with the aberrant species.

Lin Huang frowned slightly when he heard this.

When Shadow Wing noticed Lin Huang’s change of expression, it quickly changed the subject. “Since the Abyssal energy in the core source is too dense, True Gods have no way of going in very far. As for what secrets the core source hides, nobody knows except the Lords who set up the barriers.”

“I see.” Lin Huang nodded slightly and did not bother continuing with small talk. “Take me to the hunting ground right away then!”

The hunting ground of ​​the core layer was an area in the shape of a ring around the core source.

The entire ring was occupied by the core layer’s top powerhouses and strongest hunting teams.

The core source generated various polluted creatures every day, sometimes in the form of Abyssal creatures, or aberrant species, or perhaps evil spirit types, or demons… Sometimes, it even produced evil weapons with strange abilities.

As for the information about the core source producing evil weapons, Shadow Wing deliberately kept it from Lin Huang.

These evil weapons were growth-type items similar to God Weapons. For Abyssal creatures, their value was not below that of lord-level god relics.

These powerhouses stayed here in the core layer for the long term, mainly to guard the evil weapons—hunting was merely their second priority.

Lin Huang followed Shadow Wing, moving at a swift pace, and quickly arrived near the hunting ground.

“The first target I’ve chosen for you is a three-person team. The three members are all rank-5s, and two of them are about as strong as me. One is stronger than me and is estimated to have mastered over thirty types of Control-level Rule Bending Powers…” After Shadow Wing had helped Lin Huang to choose his targets, he then revealed various pieces of information about them.

Not only did Shadow Wing reveal their general level of strength, but he also gave a comprehensive description of their areas of expertise and their weaknesses.

“Do these three fellows have a grudge against you or something?” Lin Huang squinted at Shadow Wing after hearing this.

“It’s not a grudge, per se. There’s just some slight conflict between us,” Shadow Wing smiled and said. In front of Lin Huang, he did not dare to lie openly. He had decided to be as honest as possible, especially in obvious matters. After all, his life was still in Lin Huang’s hands.

When he saw Lin Huang looking at him wordlessly and smiling, Shadow Wing finally revealed with some embarrassment, “They stole my prey and tried to chase me down.”

As they closed the distance, Lin Huang turned his gaze from Shadow Wing and looked in the direction of the three targets. The three monsters had already entered his Divine Telekinesis sensing range.

Based on the intensity of their aura, they were indeed rank-5s.

However, Lin Huang could clearly feel that the auras of the three monsters were much stronger than Shadow Wing. Two of them were slightly stronger and one was more powerful by a full level. In terms of aura intensity, they definitely surpassed the Demon Baby’s group of three monsters that he had just killed.

Shadow Wing had evidently exaggerated his own powers when evaluating the strength of the three monsters.

Just when Lin Huang’s Divine Telekinesis sensed the three monsters, the three monsters also sensed the covert probing of Lin Huang’s Divine Telekinesis.

“Seems like prey walked right up to our door!” The one who spoke was a huge creature with a body that mostly resembled a mouse. However, its head was that of a human—it was bald, bearded, and had a gaunt face. The only part of it that was not human-like was its eyes that shone dazzlingly scarlet even in the dark.

“It seems like that birdman Shadow Wing is with him, too.” The one who said this was a fish-headed monster. It looked like an intensely muscled giant bullfrog that walked upright. Both its huge eyeballs protruded outward, and it had organs that resembled fish gills on both sides of its neck.

“Don’t let it get away this time!”

Among the three, the monster with the most powerful aura—a batwing monster—finally spoke.

It looked a bit like a fiend with fiend-like wings and ram’s horns. However, apart from the pair of ram’s horns on its head, it possessed no other facial organs and looked just like a faceless human. Its spine tapered to a long tail that had a poisonous scorpion-like sting at the tip.

The three monsters abruptly went into action without waiting for Lin Huang and Shadow Wing to get any closer.

Lin Huang’s Divine Telekinesis sensed the movements of the three monsters. Initially, he was a little worried that they would run away. However, the next instant, he saw all three monsters starting to charge toward himself and Shadow Wing.

It only took a moment for both parties to come face-to-face.

The batwing monster headed the monster team; the three of them surrounded Lin Huang and his companion in a triangle formation.

“Tsk tsk tsk… so you’re working with a human. Birdman, how degenerate have you become?” The fish-headed monster saw the two of them and mocked Shadow Wing.

When Shadow Wing saw the three monsters, he clearly looked a little nervous at first. However, when he glanced at Lin Huang beside him, he immediately gained back considerable courage. “You’re a fish-headed monster working with a damn bat, and you have the gall to call me degenerate?! Do your fish-headed monster friends know about this?”

Lin Huang knew something about these two monster tribes.

Batwing monsters belonged to the Night Devil tribe in the Abyss, while fish-headed monsters belonged to the Water Walkers. The Water Walkers were one of the many staple foods of the Night Devils, which made the Water Walkers extremely hostile to the Night Devils. The two tribes could almost be said to be arch-enemies.

This fish-headed monster and batwing monster in front of them working together were indeed much more outrageous than an Abyssal creature working with a human being.

“Birdman, do you have a death wish?!” The fish-headed monster had not expected that Shadow Wing would talk back at it, and its humiliation turned into anger.

Just when the fish-headed monster was about to start arguing with Shadow Wing, the batwing monster secretly sized up Lin Huang.

However, after observing for a moment, he did not notice anything out of the ordinary.

Under Thousand Face’s camouflaging, Lin Huang was an extremely run-of-the-mill ninth-rank True God of normal ninth-rank combat level. He possessed the same aura strength as an ordinary ninth-rank True God, with absolutely no special features whatsoever.

Thousand Face’s disguise was good enough to fool a peak heavenly god-level powerhouse. The batwing monster was only true god-level and could not see through the subterfuge.

However, this also puzzled it slightly because Shadow Wing was aware of their abilities. It was illogical for Shadow Wing to bring along an easy kill who was weaker than himself. It was equivalent to bringing food right to their doorstep.

Lin Huang was also sizing up the three monsters in front of him.

A Night Devil, a Water Walker, and a human-faced rat—these were Abyssal monsters that had appeared in the monster guide. According to the records in the monster guide, these three types of monsters had considerably large tribes and belonged to the lower-ranking tribes in the Abyss. However, the three monsters in front of him seemed to be individuals of note within their respective tribes, and their abilities were that of peak True God powerhouses.

Among the three, the Night Devil’s aura was obviously the strongest, and it did not try to hide it at all.

Lin Huang’s lips slowly quirked up because after seeing the three of them, he was absolutely sure that they were the rank-5s that he wanted to hunt.

Without waiting for the fish-headed monster and Shadow Wing to finish bickering, the battle sword in Lin Huang’s hand transformed into three blood-red lightning bolts and sliced toward the trio.

The blood-red lightning bolts swept across the void in a flash, closing the distance and directly appearing in front of the three monsters.

Before the fish-headed monster could even react, its body had been impaled.

The human-faced mouse noticed Lin Huang’s attack, but it could only watch as the sword gleams pierced through the air. It had no time to escape.

Only the Night Devil dodged immediately when it saw the glow of the sword gleams, but it was a touch too slow. It managed to avoid the attack that could have ruptured its head, but the sword gleams pierced through its left wing.

“That’s fast?!” As the Night Devil teetered on the verge of life and death, its entire body was drenched in cold sweat from shock.

It had assumed that the human Shadow Wing brought along could not possibly be weak in terms of ability, but it had not expected Lin Huang to be so powerful.

When Lin Huang saw the Night Devil dodging his rapid speed sword skill attack, he raised his brows but said nothing. Instead, he immediately attacked a second time.

The Night Devil had only just calmed down a little from its shock when it instantly sensed an even bigger threat heading its way. When it looked up, the second blood-red lightning bolt was already right in front of its face.

“I’m going to die…” Before it could finish its thought, half of the Night Devil’s damaged horn flew off. Its entire head burst open.

“If one slash doesn’t do the job, the second one will…” Lin Huang murmured as he sheathed his sword.

Next to him, Shadow Wing was completely caught off guard; a moment later, it still had not recovered from the shock.

It knew that Lin Huang was very powerful, but even having witnessed the event with its own eyes, it still found it hard to believe that Lin Huang could have killed off the Night Devil’s team so easily.

“Let’s go!”

Only after Lin Huang had gathered up the loot and shouted at Shadow Wing did it finally came back to reality, gazing at Lin Huang with eyes full of awe.

After killing the Night Devil’s team of three monsters, Lin Huang did not stir up very much activity.

This was something he had done quite deliberately.

Even if there were monsters nearby that sensed the energy fluctuations from the battle, it was only a fleeting thing.

On top of that, the hunting grounds near the core source were divided by using their respective Divine Telekinesis sensing range limits as boundaries and did not overlap with each other. Even the Divine Telekinesis of the owners of the two nearest hunting grounds could only probe the respective boundaries of their own hunting grounds, so it was impossible for them to learn what had happened in the hunting grounds of the Night Devil’s team.

Having witnessed Lin Huang beheading the Night Devil’s trio, Shadow Wing put aside its scheming thoughts entirely.

In the beginning, when it took the initiative to lead the way for Lin Huang, it did not have the best intentions.

It had brought Lin Huang to the Night Devils’ team here because it felt that the three of them together would not be that much weaker than Lin Huang. If both parties fought against each other, there was a high chance that both would suffer and lose. This way, it would stand to reap benefits from both sides.

What it had not expected was that Lin Huang’s abilities far exceeded its wildest imaginings.

Even a strong team like the Night Devil’s trio had been easily killed off in an instant.

One should know that while the Night Devil’s small team of three was not the most powerful in the core layer, the three members complemented each other very well. Their overall strength was also extremely impressive, almost in the top five among all the teams in the core layer.

This was also why the three of them were able to occupy an area of hunting ground outside the core source.

Sensing the extra three fifth-rank Divine Fires within his body, Lin Huang was basically sure that his previous guess had been correct.

His fourth-rank Divine Fires were saturated, but fifth-rank Divine Fires could still continue to be absorbed.

‘I’ve already accumulated eight fifth-rank Divine Fires. Based on the Life Wheels’ inherent behavior from before, they should be fully saturated after another two…’ Lin Huang made some mental calculations.

“What’s the situation with the next wave of prey?” Lin Huang asked via voice transmission as he followed swiftly behind Shadow Wing.

“The next target I’ve picked for you is a two-person team. One member is a Devil Giant, and the other is a Rotten Soul…”

Lin Huang was not unfamiliar with these two types of monsters because they had been described in the monster guide.

A Devil Giant was a giant with black hair covering its entire body and a height of around ten meters on average. The reason why it was referred to as a Devil was because its face only had a single organ—a gigantic mouth with six petals that could open up like a blooming flower. The insides of each mouth were full of razor-sharp teeth. Aside from this, there was also a tongue full of poison needles in each mouth. This tongue was an offensive weapon that could shoot out from the mouth and extend for thousands of meters; it was a hundred times more agile than an elephant’s trunk.

Its defensive abilities were also astounding—four thickset, muscular arms covered in black hair. As for its hands, they resembled the steel claws of a fierce bird and were frightening to behold.

As for the Rotten Soul, it was a green monster with a shape similar to swamp sludge, its entire body emitting foul-smelling bubbles at any given time. It could even change into any form it desired when it had to fight, but its most common form was that of a pool of sludge with countless tentacles.

Its body contained countless deadly toxins. Even if lightly pricked by the protruding tentacles, the toxins produced in an instant were enough to poison creatures of the same level of combat strength.

This team of two monsters could be considered quite formidable. Their team ranked third in terms of overall strength within the core layer.

Although they were only two individuals, their abilities were a step up from the Night Devil’s three-member team.

Lin Huang followed behind Shadow Wing; after only two or three minutes of swift travel, they arrived at the territory of the Devil Giant and the Rotten Soul.

Even before Lin Huang saw the two monsters, he could smell the stench in the air from afar.

This was the smell emitted from the Rotten Soul’s body. Not only was it foul in the extreme and nauseating to the point of causing others to vomit, but it was also highly poisonous.

Even if the toxins were not taken into consideration, probably apart from the Devil Giant, very few individuals were willing to team up with the Rotten Soul. This was because most of the Abyssal creatures would not be able to stand the noxious odor alone, whereas the Devil Giant had no sense of smell, and its body was immune to a majority of toxins.

Lin Huang hurriedly shut down his body’s external respiratory system; only then could he block out the nauseating smell that was making him want to throw up. The truth was that his tolerance for foul odors was extremely high, so even when faced with different types of rotting corpses and internal organs, he did not react much. However, this kind of stench given off by the Rotten Soul’s body would directly assault the physiological limits of many creatures’ sense of smell, causing them to involuntarily vomit. This was no longer a matter of whether or not one could bear the smell.

Standing off to one side, Shadow Wing used Divine Telekinesis to envelop its entire body, unwilling to allow any part of itself to come into contact with this odor.

“If you knew this would happen, why did you choose such a prey?” Catching a glimpse of Shadow Wing’s reaction, Lin Huang cursed inwardly.

A moment later, both of them saw the two monsters below.

The Devil Giant, which had originally been sitting with its back against a small hill, stood up and raised its featureless face in the direction where Lin Huang and Shadow Wing were in mid-air.

Not far from it, a pool of bubbling green sludge also extended its tentacles one by one like germinating young shoots.

The next instant, hundreds of tentacles suddenly surged up and shot toward Lin Huang and Shadow Wing.

Almost simultaneously, the Devil Giant leaped upward.

Although massive in size, its speed was by no means slow, and it appeared above Lin Huang and Shadow Wing almost instantaneously.

Lin Huang had not expected that these two monsters would choose to attack first.

He was momentarily surprised but reacted immediately.

The battle sword in his hand was swiftly withdrawn from its scabbard, immediately transforming into two completely different sword gleams.

One of the sword gleams, which resembled an ocean of blood, rolled with earth-shattering, crushing force toward the Rotten Soul below. Meanwhile, the other sword gleam transformed into a blood-colored crescent moon that surged up into the heavens to take on the Devil Giant above.

The waves from the ocean of blood crashed down upon the Rotten Soul like a tsunami. Wherever the waves passed, all the Rotten Soul’s tentacles were obliterated in an instant. Before the Rotten Soul had time to escape, it was completely submerged by the blood-colored waves. Its ear-piercing shrieks of agony only lasted for less than two seconds before abruptly ceasing.

On the other end, the terrifyingly sharp blood-colored crescent moon attacked the Devil Giant.

The Devil Giant seemed to be aware of the danger of this attack and quickly retracted all four limbs in front of itself, stacking them in the shape of a shield and supplementing them with dozens of types of Rule Bending Power.

From its point of view, given its own naturally terrifying defensive abilities as well as Rule Bending Powers, it was confident that it would be able to defend itself against the attacks of any powerhouses, except for top-tier true god-level powerhouses.

The next moment, however, its expression suddenly changed drastically.

This was because he saw that when the blood-red arc touched its arms, the dozens of types of Rule Bending Power it had supplemented itself with disintegrated layer by layer, providing no defense at all.

The blood-colored crescent moon encountered no resistance whatsoever, directly slicing off the Devil Giants’s four retracted limbs in front of its torso, before continuing on to slash through the Devil Giant’s body as if it were cutting up tofu…

It was another crushing instant kill!

Shadow Wing looked at Lin Huang with increasing awe and respect.

At this point, Lin Huang was ignoring his surroundings. He sank part of his consciousness into his inner world and looked at his ten Life Wheels.

In the ten Life Wheels, the ten fifth-rank Divine Fires—all rank-9— were fully complete.

Lin Huang had originally wondered whether or not he still needed to hunt and kill one or two more monsters after these two, just to see if he could continue absorbing Divine Fires. However, he now knew that it was unnecessary as he could sense the satisfaction that was transmitting from his Life Wheels.

After the ten fifth-rank Divine Fires entered the Life Wheels, his true god-level had reached a state of completion.

The rest just needed to be refined and absorbed…

Withdrawing his consciousness, Lin Huang glanced at Shadow Wing by his side. “You’re free to go now.”

Shadow Wing was startled when he heard this. “Don’t you need to continue hunting?”

“Not anymore.” Lin Huang shook his head. “I’m about to leave the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss.”

After saying this, he did not look at Shadow Wing again. He sent out his telekinetic threads and gathered up the loot on the ground before making a beeline straight toward the exit of the core layer.

Shadow Wing remained rooted to the spot in a daze, watching Lin Huang’s departure. Only after Lin Huang had left the sensing range of its Divine Telekinesis did it snap back to reality, muttering to itself under its breath, “I’m afraid the humans are about to produce an exceptional prodigy in this epoch…”

Upon coming out from the core layer of the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss, Lin Huang quickly located Lin Xin and the others by using Divine Telekinesis. He greeted them and advised them once more in passing before leaving the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss right away.

What Lin Xin and the others found slightly bewildering was that Lin Huang had left them for less than half a day, and he was already done hunting.

Lin Huang was comfortable with Lin Xin and the others remaining in the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss because, for one, Lin Xin’s team was being guarded by Witch—this was certainly enough to handle many dangerous situations. For another, Lin Xin currently possessed the Goldfinger of the Emperor’s Heart within her, so her safety was essentially something Lin Huang did not need to worry too much about.

As for Chan Dou’s team, although their combat level was not high, two of them had already mastered Rule Bending Power. As long as they did not recklessly venture deeper into the outer layer, there should be very little in the way of problems.

Lin Huang teleported out alone from the gateway of the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss, and the registrar who saw him was taken aback. Lin Huang ignored the registrar’s scrutiny and swiftly departed in a flash.

Watching Lin Huang leave, the registrar’s mouth twitched. “As expected, seven of them went in, and only one made it out alive.”

Given that too many similar cases had occurred in the past, the registrar assumed that Lin Huang’s team had perished when he saw Lin Huang leaving on his own and that only one survivor had escaped alive.

Naturally, Lin Huang was not aware that he had given rise to such a misunderstanding on the registrar’s part. Of course, even if he had known, he would not have cared.

After going some distance away from the gateway of the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss, Lin Huang located an uninhabited planet, then opened the entrance to the Great Heaven Palace and stepped through it.

In front of the Great Heaven Palace, Sword1 sat cross-legged. He was clad in a long white robe and had his eyes closed.

Sensing Lin Huang’s return, he immediately opened his eyes.

“Lord Swordmaster.” When he saw Lin Huang step out from the portal, Sword1 stood up to welcome him.

“Sword1.” Lin Huang nodded slightly.

He knew that Sword1 was sitting here, not because he was looking for Lin Huang for any particular reason, but because he was guarding the Great Heaven Palace.

Clapping a hand on Sword1’s shoulder, Lin Huang reached out to push open the great palace doors. “I’m going into closed-door cultivation for some time. If anyone has anything to bring up, you can tell me when I finish cultivation.”

“Yes, Lord Swordmaster!”

Sword1 bowed slightly, raising his head slowly only after Lin Huang had stepped into the big hall, and the doors had closed behind him. Turning around, Sword1 once again resumed his cross-legged sitting position in front of the entrance, eyes closed, resembling an immovable Taoist priest.

Once he entered the Great Heaven Palace, Lin Huang immediately sat down, cross-legged. He merely conducted cursory sensing on the condition of the Divine Fires within him before retrieving a Time Cabin Item Card right away.

With only minimal pressure from his fingers, the card transformed into golden points of starlight that condensed into the form of a cabin, not too far away from him.

Without any hesitation, Lin Huang pushed the door open immediately and walked right in.

Inside a four-star card Time Cabin, the speed of time could, at most, be a hundred times that of the outside world.

Moreover, there were no shortcuts for refining Divine Fire; one had to expend time to do so.

Inside the Time Cabin, the wooden door slowly closed and transformed into a white wall.

Since Lin Huang was already sitting cross-legged, without delaying even a second longer, he immediately expedited the Divine Fires within his body to refine furiously and to integrate…

Inside the Time Cabin, time passed one day at a time.

The progress rate of Lin Huang’s Divine Fire refinement increased day by day as well.

In the blink of an eye, three months had gone by, and Lin Huang’s combat level had also made a breakthrough from Virtual God rank-6 to Virtual God rank-9.

However, Lin Huang also discovered that his Divine Fire was refining the fifth-rank Divine Fires at a much slower pace than before.

Looking at the ten days remaining, Lin Huang crushed another Time Cabin Card to extend the time to 110 days.

He then closed his eyes and continued refining the last ten fifth-rank Divine Fires.

He did not know what would happen to him after these ten fifth-rank Divine Fires had been refined, but he knew that he was on the right track.

As time went by a day at a time, the level of refinement of the ten fifth-rank, multi-colored Divine Fires became increasingly higher. Lin Huang’s own Divine Fire also turned a more intense shade of red until it became the color of blood.

This refinement process lasted for one hundred full days, even longer than the thirty Divine Fires from seventh to ninth rank combined, that Lin Huang had previously refined.

Seeing the last Divine Fire completely integrate into his scarlet Divine Fire, Lin Huang could not help but exhale in a long sigh, “Finally I’ve finished refining…”

He could sense that the Divine Fires within his body had completely merged together, to the point where he could feel a sense of flawless perfection. These ten Divine Fires seem to have reached their limits and could no longer become more powerful.

Following the complete merging of the Divine Fires into a fully integrated state, the Divine Power within Lin Huang’s entire being began swiftly returning to his Divine Fires for further refinement. This refined Divine Power then began to cycle back into his body, transforming every single cell, even at the atomic level. Not only that, each particle that made up his soul also underwent rapid transformation as if it were under the workings of a catalyst.

Almost every day, Lin Huang could clearly feel himself becoming stronger.

The entire process lasted for ten days. Lin Huang’s Divine Power was refined hundreds of times by the ten Divine Fires before it finally reached its peak. After ten rounds of repeated refinement and transformation, Lin Huang felt that he was more than ten times stronger than before; he even vaguely felt that his current physical strength was probably comparable to that of a Heavenly God’s body.

Immersing his consciousness within his inner world, Lin Huang savored his transformation.

He knew that he had not advanced to true god-level yet, but he also knew that he was much stronger than other True Gods.

“Is this virtual god-level rank-10…”

After a glance at his character card, Lin Huang knew that he had advanced to a previously uncharted level—virtual god-level rank-10.

In the past, cultivators and Virtual Gods could reach rank-9 at most; beyond that, they would be at true god-level already.

However, Lin Huang had already reached the pinnacle of virtual god-level—virtual god-level rank-10.

“In that case, after this, how do I achieve a breakthrough to true god-level?”

Lin Huang had just asked himself this question when a strange idea surfaced in his mind—he could create a Godly Right!

“Create a Godly Right?”

Of course, Lin Huang had heard of a Godly Right before. It was something only Heavenly Gods possessed.

Under normal circumstances, elevation from True God to Heavenly God required the mastery of at least one type of rule at Fullness-level, followed by a further breakthrough and condensing invisible god rules into concrete god sequence chains.

Establishing god sequence chains was tantamount to stepping across the threshold of heavenly god-level.

Once they possessed god sequence chains, Heavenly Gods would further integrate these into their inner worlds and use them to derive sufficient rules. After that, they would use the god sequence chains as a trunk and the derived rules as branches to construct a rule network throughout their inner world. The will of this rule network that permeated the entire inner world was a Godly Right. Actually, to a certain degree, it was also a type of world will. It was considered a non-natural, man-made world will.

At heavenly god-level, one could construct nine god sequence chains at most, but only one Godly Right.

These nine god sequence chains were the nine backbones of a Godly Right, and the various types of rules derived from the nine sequences were all part of the Godly Right as well.

Logically, the construction of a Godly Right would come after heavenly god-level.

At this moment, however, it became the way for Lin Huang to elevate to true god-level.

“I’m only a Virtual God; how do I go about constructing a Godly Right?” Lin Huang deliberated with his brows furrowed, not even noticing that the Time Cabin was dispersing around him.

Lin Huang immersed his consciousness into his inheritance memories, quickly scouring for memories related to the construction of a Godly Right, and hoping to find something to use as a reference.

The first thing he had a look at was the Great Heaven inheritance.

As the Heavenly God who dominated the God Territory for an entire epoch, Great Heaven’s many experiences were a treasure for Lin Huang. That was why the first thing that occurred to Lin Huang was to check Great Heaven’s inheritance memories regarding the construction of a Godly Right.

After setting the timeframe of Great Heaven’s memories to the point before the construction of a Godly Right, Lin Huang rapidly scanned through this segment of memory.

The more he went through these memories, the more apprehensive he felt.

Great Heaven was undoubtedly an egotistical powerhouse. He had already mastered nine types of Rule Bending Power at Fullness-level early on when he was a ninth-rank True God.

To construct a Godly Right, his idea had been to condense all nine god sequence chains in one go and directly advance to ninth-rank Heavenly God, after the nine types of rules had reached Fullness-level and been condensed into god sequence chains.

However, things did not progress as smoothly as he had imagined. When the second series of god sequence chains condensed, his body and soul began undergoing massive internal pressure. He resisted this pressure valiantly; however, he only ended up condensing four god sequence chains before he had no choice but to give up. This was because the construction of the fourth god sequence chain had already caused his body and soul to start showing signs of disintegration, and even the God Territory within him had begun to collapse.

If it had not been for the timely suppression by Yin Yin, his Goldfinger, he would have died immediately.

This proved that Great Heaven’s method was not feasible.

Furthermore, at Lin Huang’s current strength of body and soul, it was impossible for him to accommodate nine god sequence chains in one go.

After condensing the four god sequence chains, Great Heaven used them as the trunk and their Rule Bending Powers and Elemental Enlightenment as the branches and leaves. He integrated them into the God Territory within him and constructed its World Rules…

After looking over the construction process of Great Heaven’s Godly Right, Lin Huang deliberated over it.

After a moment, he closed Great Heaven’s inheritance memory and got up. Pushing the doors open, he walked out of the Great Heaven Palace.

Seeing Lin Huang step out from the Great Heaven Palace, Sword1 immediately stood up with a flicker of astonishment in his eyes.

Only two short days had passed, and Lin Huang had already advanced from virtual god-level rank-6 to the limits of virtual god-level rank-9 in one go… From the looks of things, it was possible that he might break through a step further to true god-level any time now.

What surprised Sword1 even more was that although Lin Huang’s aura was restrained to the maximum, he emanated a faint sense of danger.

Without waiting for Sword1 to greet him, Lin Huang spoke first, “Please summon all the Sword Servants within the region of the Great Heaven Palace.”

“Yes, Lord Swordmaster!” Sword1 answered quickly, without even asking why.

Once Sword1 had issued the announcement about the assembly, less than a minute later, Swords1 to 100 all arrived at the scene; not a single one of them was absent.

All the Sword Servants present were filled with trepidation, as well as anticipation. They were completely unaware as to why the Swordmaster had summoned them over here all of a sudden.

Lin Huang’s gaze swept over everyone present. He could see everyone’s uneasiness and hopefulness and immediately declared loudly, “I summoned you all here this time because of cultivation needs. I would like to look at the construction processes of your Godly Right. You don’t have to give me the cultivation inheritance—I just want to have a look at your memory images between the condensing of the god sequence chains and the construction of the Godly Right.”

Upon hearing Lin Huang’s words, many people displayed astonishment.

Of course, they could clearly sense that Lin Huang’s current combat level was not at true god-level yet. Logically speaking, he was still miles away from the construction of a Godly Right.

However, since the Swordmaster had made a request, as Sword Servants, naturally, they could not refuse.

Whatever the reason, the Sword Servants were willing to contribute these segments of memory if the Swordmaster so required.

Sword1 was the first one to step forward and replicate this memory. He touched Lin Huang’s palm with a finger, and the memory images instantly poured into Lin Huang’s mind.

Lin Huang did not click it open to check; he merely nodded at Sword1, signaling to the next Sword Servant.

After that, Sword2 came, followed by Sword3… one by one, the Sword Servant stepped forward and transmitted a copy of their memory images into Lin Huang’s mind.

After the last transmission from Sword100 had been completed, Lin Huang nodded slightly at everyone present. “I’m going back into closed-door cultivation. You may go now.”

The Sword Servants left in twos and threes, while Lin Huang once again turned and went back into the Great Heaven Palace.

Once within the Palace, Lin Huang immediately sat down cross-legged. He closed his eyes, immersed his consciousness into his Ocean of Consciousness, and began looking through the Sword Servants’ memory images.

The segments of memory images unfolded before Lin Huang’s eyes like VR images, every single detail crystal clear.

Lin Huang checked out each of the one hundred Sword Servants’ Godly Right construction processes, and his thoughts gradually became clearer.

“On the surface, the construction of a Godly Right looks like it’s based on god sequence chains, but it’s actually based more on the inner God Territory. The construction process of a Godly Right is essentially structuring World Rules within the inner world, artificially creating a world will, then integrating one’s individual will with the world will…

“The Heavenly Gods’ god sequence chains and the various derived rules aren’t part of constructing the Godly Right—they’re vehicles for the Godly Right…

“A Godly Right is essentially the world will of a God Territory and is also the individual will of a Heavenly God, which makes the Heavenly God the absolute master of the World Rules in the God Territory…

“The enhancement of a Godly Right requires not only the personal cultivation of the God Territory’s owner but also the participation of the other creatures within the God Territory. Every Rule Bending Power they master, even if repeated, will become part of the World Rules and a vehicle for increasing the power of the Godly Right…”

After reading through one hundred Sword Servants’ Godly Right construction processes, Lin Huang finally managed to obtain a general line of thinking.

“My God Territory has already integrated with the gravel world; the various types of Rule Bending Power within me have already become the World Rules of the gravel world, and even my will has been integrated into the gravel world’s world will itself… To some extent, my integrated gravel world will is the weakened version of a Godly Right. The reason why it hasn’t condensed into a true Godly Right is that these Rule Bending Powers are still not powerful enough—or not numerous enough—to allow the world will to condense into a Godly Right…

“That means if I want to construct a Godly Right, either I condense a god sequence chain to provide both energy and a vehicle for the world will, or I put enough rules into the God Territory so that their power is comparable to that of a god sequence chain…”

For Lin Huang currently, constructing god sequence chains presented no great difficulty.

At most, it was a matter of a few Epiphany Cards.

After all, he had already mastered Rule Bending Power at Control-level, and it was not difficult to reach Fullness-level. If he wanted to make a further breakthrough, he could do so by using a few Epiphany Cards.

However, Lin Huang did not really want to take this path as he had seen the limitations of it from the Sword Servants’ Godly Right construction processes.

Normal heavenly god-level powerhouses could only condense nine god sequence chains at most.

For normal individuals, this number was sufficient as not many people were able to master multiple rules to the level of Fullness, much less make a further breakthrough to condense god sequence chains.

However, for true genius powerhouses, this was a huge limitation.

An example was a powerhouse like Great Heaven—when he was a ninth-rank True God, the number of rules he had mastered surpassed even Lin Huang. He had even condensed nine types of Fullness-level rules and hundreds of Control-level ones.

The reason Great Heaven had pursued a way to condense nine god sequence chains in one go was that there were only nine chances to condense god sequence chains at heavenly god-level.

He was able to dominate an entire epoch because he was able to condense at least four god sequence chains every time. By the ninth sequence, he had forty-two god sequence chains within him, far surpassing that of most people by at least four times over.

This was not a mere fourfold increase in abilities! It was an increase of hundreds—even thousands—of times!

What Lin Huang wanted was even more than that…

Since he was not going to go down the path of forming god sequence chains, Lin Huang thought of another way. He would amass enough layers of Rule Bending Power to replace the god sequence chains, and turn them into a vehicle for the Godly Right, to provide power for it.

This idea was certainly an extremely good one, but Lin Huang then encountered a problem—he had only mastered one hundred and twenty types of rules.

Even if he included the few True Gods from the gravel world who had evolved, there were only a hundred and thirty or so types in total, which was far from enough to substitute for a god sequence chain.

‘Although it’s possible to borrow the Rule Bending Power mastered by the local residents of the gravel world, it’s still far from enough.’ Lin Huang frowned and pondered, ‘The gravel world has only just rebuilt its World Rules, and the number of people able to break through to true god-level in such a short time is limited, so the number of rules that they’ll be able to provide is also extremely limited.

‘If I want to obtain a large number of Rule Bending Powers, I’ll have to borrow them from somewhere else. For example, by letting a large number of True Gods migrate into the gravel world…’ As Lin Huang’s train of thought went further and further, his gaze passed over the void of his inner world and settled on the Monster Cards within him…

‘If I migrate all my card monsters to the gravel world and let them become residents there, does that mean I can also borrow all the Rule Bending Powers they have?!’

Lin Huang’s eyes lit up at the thought of this.

Although he only had a total of around forty true god-level imperial monsters in his possession, this did not include the number of Bug Tribe fighters in his hive.

Due to limited materials, the six Bug Tribe Queen Mothers had not been able to breed a large number of True Gods; they had only bred about twenty of them. However, when the Thousand Snake Sect had invaded the gravel world, he had obtained more than five thousand true god-level corpses. This batch of materials had since been divided between the six Queen Mothers, and each of them had produced true god-level Bug Tribe fighters, including thousands of Bug Kings.

‘If I include the newly-evolved True Gods from the Bug Tribe, there would definitely be over ten thousand rules!’ Lin Huang was quite excited, and shifted his gaze from within him, looking through the doors of the Great Heaven Palace and at Sword1 who was sitting at the entrance. “If I add three hundred or so Sword Servants… it should be enough to construct a Godly Right!”

Now that Lin Huang’s combat level had elevated to virtual god-level rank-10, all the Sword Servants’ powers had been correspondingly unsealed to ninth-rank true god-level. Furthermore, almost all of these Sword Servants had mastered at least several dozen to a few hundred types of rules, so the number of rules that they could provide in total might be even more than the thousands of Bug Tribe members.

Once he reached this point in his ruminations, Lin Huang immediately got to work.

It was very difficult to become a resident of a world. One needed to be recognized by the world will and have their souls marked with the world brand. However, this could not be any easier for Lin Huang, as he had integrated with the world will of the gravel world.

It would not matter even if this plan did not work out. If worse came to worst, he would merely need to control the world will and remove the world brand.

Lin Huang returned his consciousness to the gravel world and moved himself into an expanse of void.

He summoned Death Knight. The reason he used it as a test subject was that it had the ability to revive itself. In the unlikely event that something went wrong and the Revival Rule of Monster Paradise became null, Death Knight would still be able to revive itself.

After briefly explaining to Death Knight what he wanted to do, Lin Huang allowed Death Knight to lower its defenses and let itself be branded by the world will.

After only a moment, the branding was successful, and Lin Huang could clearly feel that the number of World Rules had indeed increased.

His first experiment was a success, with no unexpected problems. Lin Huang then began summoning his imperial monsters in batches, leaving the world brand on them one by one.

Once all forty-plus imperial monsters had been branded, Lin Huang summoned the hive and branded all five thousand-plus true god-level Bug Kings and Bug Tribe fighters.

In the process, he could clearly feel that the World Rules of the gravel world were becoming increasingly stronger.

The total number of World Rules had also skyrocketed from the initial hundred and thirty-plus types to tens of thousands.

After recalling all the summoning beasts and the hive, Lin Huang quickly summoned the Sword Servants who had remained in the gravel world.

Sensing Lin Huang’s call, the two hundred and sixty-eight Sword Servants hurried to meet Lin Huang in less than three minutes.

The combat level they displayed now was no longer virtual god-level rank-9, but ninth-rank true god-level.

Lin Huang stated his request, and none of the Sword Servants had any objections.

The two hundred and sixty-eight brandings were completed in less than a minute.

Lin Huang could clearly feel that the World Rules had increased by over twenty thousand.

He hesitated for a moment but decided to abide by Great Heaven’s recommendation and did not put the remaining hundred Sword Servants into the gravel world.

It was not that he did not trust Sword1 and the others, but because he could not predict the consequences of releasing all one hundred of them from the Great Heaven Territory.

“Thirty thousand-plus rules should be enough to support the construction of a Godly Right,” Lin Huang murmured.

He also knew that this was not yet the end of constructing the Godly Right. His Godly Right would become stronger once he left a world brand on Sword1 and the other Sword Servants in the future, as well as the elevation of local residents to True Gods and the migration of more True Gods into the gravel world.

After dismissing the Sword Servants, Lin Huang floated in the void alone, closing his eyes to sense the World Rules within him.

Over thirty-three thousand rules coalesced into illusory stars of different colors and sizes, radiating points of starlight to every corner of the world.

Lin Huang separated a thread of his consciousness, crushed a Time Cabin Card, and stepped into it.

He began to integrate the world will and his own will, as well as the Rule Bending Stars in the heavens…

His own hundred and twenty rules were the easiest to integrate; he completed this in almost no time.

Integrating the rules mastered by his card monsters was also not too difficult—it only took less than a day.

Perhaps due to their contracts, or perhaps because they were sword cultivators, it only took a week to integrate the Sword Servants’ rules.

However, integrating the Rule Bending Power of the Bug Tribe without a card contract was a much more cryptic affair.

Lin Huang spent almost two Time Cabin Cards’ worth of time before completely integrating all the rules in the God Territory within him at last.

At this point, the world will had finally begun to transform…

It was getting more and more powerful every day.

After ten days had passed, the world will finally completed its transformation into a Godly Right.

At the very moment that the Godly Right condensed into form, the Divine Fires in all ten of his Life Wheels vibrated simultaneously, releasing thousands of scarlet light rays and turning the entire gravel world blood-red.

However, this phenomenon only lasted for a moment before everything returned to normal.

Lin Huang could clearly feel that his ten Divine Fires had further transformed the very moment the Godly Right was formed.

The transformation of the Divine Fires also brought about a direct transformation of his physical body, soul, Divine Telekinesis, and the Divine Power within him.

This transformation process lasted for three days before finally ending.

The moment the transformation was over, Lin Huang knew that he had officially become a first-rank True God.

Title Translator’s Note: G.O.A.T. stands for Greatest Of All Time

“Host: Lin Huang”

“Gender: Male”

“Age: 21”

“Combat Strength: True God-level (first-rank)”

“Goldfinger: Xiao Hei, Stone Tablet, Eternity Fire, Yin Yin”

“Integration Item: Origin God’s Heart, One Page Sword Scripture, Galactic Hive, God Weapon, Great Heaven Palace (Initial Integration)…”

“God Territory: Monster Paradise”

“Godly Right: Unnamed”

“Inheritance: Great Heaven, Sword2, Sword8, Sword10, Sorcerer Goddess…”

“Divine Ability: Substitute, Golden Cicada…”

“God Rule: Superhuman Strength, Seraphic Speed, God-slaying Power…”

“Elemental Enlightenment: Instant Flash, Sun Shadow, Heavenly Roc, Traceless, Lightning God, Heaven’s Punishment, Tattooed Demon, Hell…”

“Sword Dao: True Self Level (Possesses Sword Heart, Sword Soul)”

“Sword Skills: 300,000 types”

“Minor: Twisted Fate Scripture, Seamless…”

“Monster Skills: Divine Telekinesis, Divine Regeneration, Holy Power, Elemental Immunity, Leech Pods, Absolute Control, Divine Purification Light, Revival, Immortal Warrior Body, Vampire Particles, Divine Strength, Divine Defense, Lightning Lord, Mirror, Doll forbidden skill, Punishment, Divine Witchcraft, Knight, Integration, Mechanical Building, Mechanical Recovery, Evil Blood Substitute, Divine Disguise, Demon Flame, Hellish Fire, Abyssal Fire, Lightning God, Phoenix…”

“Summon Authority: Activated (Pure Spirit)”

“Available Number of Summons: 100”

“Remarks: Almost at the standard of a qualified host (๑¯³¯๑)”

…

After checking his personal panel, Lin Huang was quite satisfied overall. “What on earth is this kaomoji in the remarks?”

After more than five years, he had actually long since gotten used to not looking at Xiao Hei’s remarks about himself. This time, he had merely glanced at the remarks and noticed the strange kaomoji but did not ponder over it any further.

After evolving to true god-level, not only had his summon authority been activated to Pure Spirit rank-6, but the upper limit of all his mythical-level imperial monsters’ combat strength had been unsealed to heavenly god-level (the imperial monsters’ combat strengths were not directly elevated to heavenly god-level), and Lin Huang’s available number of summons had increased from the original 50 to 100.

In addition to the changes in his imperial monsters, on the Great Heaven Territory’s side, Lin Huang’s authority over the Sword Servants had also increased. Initially, he only had control authority over the Sword Servants whose numbers came after Sword100, but now he had gained control authority over Swords11 to 100 as well. Excluding the strongest—Swords1 to 10—control authority over the remaining Sword Servants was now fully unsealed.

Moreover, the upper limit of the Sword Servants’ combat power had also been unsealed even further, and they were now at first-rank heavenly god-level.

Lin Huang clicked on the Godly Right in his card and checked the details.

“Godly Right (Unnamed): Godly Right constructed from more than three thousand types of Rule Bending Power.”

“Godly Right Effect 1: When inside the God Territory, the Godly Right user can use all rules, sequences, and Odylic Forces within the God Territory without limitations.”

“Godly Right Effect 2: When outside the God Territory, the Godly Right possessor can borrow at will any rules, sequences, and Odylic Forces within the God Territory that is within the range of the physical body and spirit strength to withstand.”

“Godly Right Effect 3: When inside the God Territory, the Godly Right possessor can lend all rules, sequences, and Odylic Forces within the God Territory to inhabitants inside the God Territory for a short period of time.”

“Godly Right Effect 4: Under the influence of the Godly Right, the Godly Right possessor can learn all rules, sequences, and Odylic Forces within the God Territory at epiphany speed.”

…

“Remarks: This Godly Right was not constructed using god sequence chains, but by borrowing the Rule Bending Power of other True Gods within the God Territory to create a completely open rule network. Due to this unique openness, the World Rules of this God Territory are no longer limited by the god sequence chains and can accommodate all types of Rule Bending Power.”

…

The effects of the Godly Right were entirely what Lin Huang had anticipated, as basically all Godly Rights had similar effects.

It was just that due to the difference in the fundamental construction of the Godly Right, the final results that appeared would definitely be different.

Just like the description given in the remarks section, Lin Huang’s Godly Right had been created using a large number of Rule Bending Powers, which was why he could borrow all the Rule Bending Powers of the entire God Territory.

As for other Heavenly Gods who used god sequence chains to construct their Godly Rights, the World Rules of the God Territory within their bodies could only be integrated with the rules derived from the god sequence chains, and their Godly Right would also be restricted accordingly.

After reading the description of his Godly Right, Lin Huang had more thoughts about the matter.

He had now advanced to true god-level, and his Sword Servants all had their powers unsealed to first-rank heavenly god-level. If one included the hundred Sword Servants over whom he had just unsealed his authority, there were three hundred and fifty-eight of them in total. Even if each of them only unsealed one god sequence chain, the number of god sequence chains in the World Rules within his body would still increase by at least 358.

Furthermore, under the effects of the Godly Right, he could borrow these god sequence chains any time he wanted as long as his physical body and Life Soul strength allowed for it.

Lin Huang’s original estimation was that at his current first-rank true god-level ability, he should be able to contend against a second-rank Heavenly God, but still have a slim chance of defeating a third-rank Heavenly God.

However, now that his Godly Right had been constructed, he felt that with his physical body and Life Soul strength, he should be able to borrow four god sequence chains without any major problems.

One could say that with this round of advancement, his strength had increased exponentially.

Even so, what surprised Lin Huang even more than this were the changes in his God Territory.

“God Territory: Monster Paradise”

“God Territory Ability 1: After a summoning beast dies, the dead summoning beast’s soul will return to the God Territory with its body reconstructed with Divine Power and revived. Those that have broken souls will have their broken soul pieces recalled and recovered.”

“Remark 1: Unlimited number of revivals.”

“Remark 2: If killed by an Odylic attack, it will truly die and cannot be revived.”

“Remark 3: Each revival requires the consumption of a certain amount of Godly Right Power (the consumed Godly Right can be replenished).”

“Derivative Ability: If the God Territory possessor dies, they can choose a summoning beast to substitute death.”

“Remark 1: The number of substitute deaths per day depends on the number of summoning beasts. Each summoning beast can only die in place of the host once within 24 hours.”

“Remark 2: If the God Territory possessor is killed with Odyl, they will truly die and cannot be substituted by a summoning beast.”

“Remark 3: After a summoning beast dies in place of its host, it will return to the God Territory to be revived.”

…

“God Territory Ability 2: The God Territory possessor can borrow any skills, divine abilities, rules, and sequence powers of all summoning beasts at any time.”

“Remark 1: The borrowing of Monster Skills already possessed by the God Territory possessor is invalid and will not produce compounded effects.”

“Remark 2: The number of borrowed skills is not restricted by the upper limit of the God Territory possessor’s number of Monster Skills.”

…

After the advancement of Lin Huang’s God Territory once more, the biggest change was that all summoning beasts could theoretically be revived an unlimited number of times.

As long as they were not assaulted by the Odylic attack of a lord-level powerhouse, they would not be truly killed.

Of course, such revivals were not without a cost; a certain amount of Divine Power would have to be expended. However, to Lin Huang, such a cost was nothing to him, because as he continued to grow stronger, his Godly Right would also grow stronger along with him.

In addition, he could borrow the skills, divine abilities, rules, and sequence powers of all his contract monsters at will, without any restrictions. This made his Monster Skill bar seem a bit like a mere decorative item.

With that said, however, Lin Huang knew that he had actually improved upon some of the skills in his Monster Skill bar, and the effect was better than his summoning beast’s original skill.

It was just that there were also many skills that had not been modified. Since he could borrow them at will now, Lin Huang intended to get rid of the unmodified skills one by one and replace them with skills that were more powerful and more suitable for modification.

After sending Swords10 to 100 into the gravel world so they could receive their brands, the number of rules in Lin Huang’s God Territory had now increased to more than forty-five thousand types.

In addition, his authority over his Sword Servants’ heavenly god-levels had been unlocked since he had elevated to true god-level. As a result, four hundred and twelve god sequence chains had been added to the World Rules of his God Territory.

At first-rank, some True Gods would have mastered only two god sequence chains, so this number surpassed Lin Huang’s expectations.

‘The addition of the god sequence chains has made my Godly Right exponentially stronger; even the speed at which the World Rules are evolving has increased by more than a hundredfold…’ Lin Huang furrowed his brow slightly and pondered, ‘My strength has also leveled up, but my combat level is still stuck at first-rank true god-level…’

He was going down a completely new path of cultivation. As he had created his own method to advance to true god-level, naturally, there was no one to guide him on how to cultivate after that, so he could only think of ways on his own.

‘Currently, there are many directions that I could take to become stronger. I could elevate the rules that I’ve mastered to Fullness-level. I could further advance my Sword Dao true meaning to Sword Dao heavenly rule and continue to cultivate Seamless to strengthen my Divine Telekinesis. I could also accumulate more World Rules and god sequence chains for my God Territory…’

Lin Huang’s thought processes slowly gained more clarity. Although the way by which he could increase his combat strength was still unclear for the time being, there were still many other ways to increase his abilities. He also anticipated that the method for increasing his combat strength ought to be among one of these paths for improving his abilities.

‘My current self should be strong enough to take on a fourth-rank Heavenly God. If I borrow the power of the god sequence chains, I could even go up against a fifth-rank,’ Lin Huang re-evaluated his overall ability.

The three hundred and fifty-eight heavenly god-level Sword Servants—this was combat strength at the first echelon.

Kylie, Killer, Ku Rong (Demonic Buddhist Holy Son), and Blackscale (the Symbiotic Creature of the Abyssal Fountain) were Supreme God rank-5s, all of whom were at ninth-rank true god-level; it was only a matter of time before the four of them elevated to heavenly god-level. They were in the second echelon.

Among the card monsters who were at Pseudo-supreme God rank-4.5, Teng Ran (Sect Leader of the Thousand Snake Sect) had been re-instituted to ninth-rank true god-level. Bloody was currently at sixth-rank, while Bai was currently only at fourth-rank. However, without the restriction of the upper limit of Lin Huang’s combat strength, it would not be difficult for the two of them to evolve further. The three of them were considered the third echelon.

Grimace, Charcoal, the Bug Tribe Queen Mothers, and the remaining others were all at mythical-level rank-4, and their combat levels were at third-rank or fourth-rank, so there was still a lot of room for improvement.

Under the command of the four Queen Mothers were more than five thousand mythical-level rank-4 Bug Kings and Bug Tribe elite fighters who were at true god-level as well. They were also a powerful combat force.

Due to the enhancement of Monster Paradise, his summoning beasts could not be truly killed. For the next few days, Lin Huang put on the Thousand Face mask and went around several battlefields in the God Territory, releasing all the imperial monsters apart from the hive to let them hunt on their own and increase their combat strength.

Lin Huang spent a few days to complete this before he contacted Bloody again.

“What’s the situation like on Kylie’s end?”

“Since she’s at supreme god-level rank-5, she was affected by the increase in your combat strength, so she was able to advance her own combat strength to ninth-rank true god-level in one go,” Bloody replied, then continued, “I’ve let Kylie temporarily suppress the advancement of her combat strength. We took this opportunity to request a large number of materials on the grounds that we would be going into closed-door cultivation. We’re still short of the last two types of materials needed to advance to rank-6, but we should be able to get them within this month.

“What about you? Have you advanced to true god-level yet?” Bloody immediately enquired.

“I’ve already completed the advancement, and Pure Spirit rank-6 authority has been activated.” Lin Huang nodded. “However, if a Monster Card isn’t recalled, then there’s a distance limitation on use of the Advance Card, so Kylie must be within my field of vision for the Advance Card to be effective. That’s why you need to arrange for me to meet with her in person.”

“That’s hardly a problem.” Bloody nodded. “Next month, a secret territory will be opened in the God Territory, and only organizations that are peak grade-5 and above are eligible to participate. Various major organizations will send their best genius talents to compete. When the time comes, Kylie and I will participate together. You can also apply to join via Death Sickle by using Xie Lin’s identity—it’s unlikely that they’ll turn you down.

“Later, I’ll send you a file containing detailed information about this secret territory.”

After they had finished discussing important matters, the two chatted for a while more before ending the call.

Bloody sent over the documents about the secret territory in short order. As soon as he received them, Lin Huang immediately opened them and began checking the information out.

After a quick scan through the file, Lin Huang was able to form a general understanding of this secret territory.

This secret territory that Bloody had mentioned was actually a mini world used by God Capital for locking up prisoners. Every few hundred years, when the number of prisoners in the mini world had accumulated to a certain level, God Capital would dispatch people there to conduct a clean-up. In reality, this so-called clean-up was letting a few Heavenly Gods enter the place to slaughter the prisoners. Later on, God Capital felt that this method was too troublesome. Even though there were also Heavenly Gods among the prisoners, most of them were only Virtual Gods and True Gods. The members of God Capital were all pure-blooded Protoss, and they regarded it as a shameful thing for Heavenly Gods to slaughter Virtual Gods and True Gods.

Therefore, someone came up with the idea of letting the Virtual Gods and True Gods of God Capital enter the place as a trial, and carry out a hunting competition.

After several of these events, the higher-ups of God Capital felt that this hunting competition involving only their own members was not exciting enough, so they decided to just open up the secret territory to a few other grade-7 organizations and invite the gifted geniuses of other organizations to participate. After that, one by one, grade-6 organizations also began taking part, and things slowly evolved to the way things were at present.

The prisoners in the secret territory had also gradually gotten used to this game.

At God Capital’s request, prisoners were allowed to arbitrarily attack hunters of the same level. However, True Gods were prohibited from attacking Virtual Gods, while Heavenly Gods were forbidden to attack True Gods and Virtual Gods. They could only fight back if the God Territory hunters attacked them first.

Moreover, if the prisoners survived by the end of the hunt, they would get a definite share of the spoils from the hunters that they had killed. God Capital would even dispatch someone to help them unlock the storage rings of the slain individuals.

To some extent, this also motivated the prisoners to participate in this game.

The most important thing was that Virtual Gods and True Gods who survived three consecutive hunts would be released. Of course, this was not an unconditional release. After they left the prison space, they were obligated to sign a master-servant contract with members of God Capital to become their God Servants.

Lin Huang was initially rather curious about why God Capital would have so many prisoners.

After reading the documents to the end, though, he discovered that this game had developed to a point where not only God Capital but various other major organizations were also providing prisoners to God Capital.

One organization in particular was the God Combat Temple. After every territorial war that they participated in—no matter if it were large-scale or small-scale—they would bring back large numbers of prisoners of war.

In the secret territory, the number of prisoners that the Combat God Temple contributed accounted for more than half the total prisoner population. That was more than all the other organizations combined.

Lin Huang did not experience any great misgivings over hunting these prisoners because most of them were from the Abyss, the Bug Tribe, and other tribes of different species. There were humans as well, but they were very few in number. He just had to make sure that he did not initiate a move against his compatriots first.

To help Kylie make a further breakthrough to Pure Spirit rank-6, it was imperative that Lin Huang made a trip to the secret territory.

The only thing was, Lin Huang had previously entered the Great Heaven Territory under the identity of Xie Lin. In the end, although he had faked his death and not teleported out, many organizations in the God Territory had guessed that it was not that he had not teleported out—instead he had obtained the inheritance of the Great Heaven Territory and hidden himself.

Although this matter had occurred nearly a year ago, there were still many powerhouses in the God Territory who were looking for Xie Lin, hoping to seize the Great Heaven inheritance.

Therefore, Xie Lin’s identity could no longer be used, at least not openly.

After reading through the information that Bloody had provided, Lin Huang deliberated for a moment before using his communicator to dial a number.

The busy tone had not even rung halfway before the communicator connected, and a male voice came from the other end.

“Xie Lin?!”

“Senior Buried Heaven, I need your help with something,” Lin Huang skipped the pleasantries and asked immediately.

“Go ahead.” Buried Heaven did not hesitate.

 “I want a pass to enter God Capital’s secret territory next month,” Lin Huang cut straight to the chase.

“It’s not difficult for me to help you get a pass. However, you should know that if you’re recognized, even Death Sickle can’t protect you,” Buried Heaven answered just as bluntly.

Lin Huang had previously chosen not to accept Death Sickle’s protection, instead opting to disappear straight away after obtaining the Great Heaven inheritance—something which had caused great dissatisfaction among the upper tiers of Death Sickle.

If Lin Huang’s identity was exposed during this trial, it was impossible for Death Sickle to come forward and take the pressure for him unless he was willing to give up the Great Heaven inheritance. However, Buried Heaven also knew that Lin Huang would never do that.

“I know that. I’ll change my name, and I’ll also change my combat style. Moreover, my combat strength has already evolved to true god-level, so people shouldn’t make the connection with Xie Lin.”

“Since you’re set on requesting this, I’ll help you apply for a pass then.” Buried Heaven did not waste any more words. “Find a branch of Death Sickle on your own and apply for it using a new identity, then tell me your new name, and that will do. After that, I’ll send the invitation letter directly to you.”

After ending the call with Buried Heaven, Lin Huang immediately dialed Yang Ling’s number.

Strangely, the communicator showed the notification, “The number you have dialed is not in service.”

Lin Huang frowned slightly. Just as he was about to try calling again, there was an incoming call from an unfamiliar number.

He immediately connected the call.

“Come straight to the point.” The voice was clearly Yang Ling’s.

“Why has your number gone out of service?” Lin Huang asked in surprise.

“I’ve encountered a small problem.” Yang Ling seemed reluctant to say more. “Whatever it is you need, tell me quickly.”

After hesitating for a moment, Lin Huang decided not to probe any further. He immediately told Yang Ling what he needed, “I want a fake identity in the God Territory, one that I can use to register with Death Sickle.”

“I’ll help you make several this time then, “Yang Ling said straightforwardly, “Just send me the pictures and personal information after disguising yourself—that will do. Also, for the time being, don’t contact me if it isn’t urgent.”

Hearing Yang Ling say this, Lin Huang realized that the problem his friend was facing might not be a small matter.

“Is there anything I can help with?”

Yang Ling fell silent for a moment before answering in a low voice, “It’s possible that I’m being watched by the Raiders…There’s nothing much you can help with. Just make sure you don’t get exposed.”

After saying this, he paused but did not hang up. He seemed to hesitate for a little while before continuing, “If something really does happen to me, help me take care of Hong Zhuang.”

Hearing these words, Lin Huang blinked in surprise. He recovered himself and was about to ask about Hong Zhuang, but Yang Ling had already ended the call from his end.

‘Don’t tell me this boy has really developed feelings for Hong Zhuang…’

Whether it was in terms of physique or looks, Hong Zhuang was a top-notch beauty. However, her character and way of doing things had always made Lin Huang keep his distance, despite admiring her.

Even if he was certain now that his abilities had far surpassed Hong Zhuang’s own, he was still somewhat wary of this woman.

Looking at the state Yang Ling was in currently, he really felt that this woman’s methods were terrifying.

Shaking his head, Lin Huang temporarily set aside the matter of Yang Ling and Hong Zhuang. He put on Thousand Face, disguised himself with several different appearances, and took a few ID photos of himself.

After that, he simply set up the identities for his various new looks and sent the photos to Yang Ling, as well as the identity set-ups.

A moment later, Yang Ling replied with a message.

“In three days, you can go collect them at the front desk of the illegal hotel.”

Lin Huang was startled. He had forgotten to tell Yang Ling earlier which planet he was on. Even the hotel he had checked into was an illegally-run hotel that did not require ID verification, but clearly, Yang Ling already knew where he was.

To avoid missing the package that Yang Ling would be sending over, Lin Huang did not go into closed-door cultivation in the days that followed. Instead, he sat cross-legged in the hotel lounge with his eyes closed, cultivating Seamless.

Lin Huang did not know if it was because he had evolved to true god-level, but he noticed that his cultivation of Seamless was more than ten times faster than before.

Since his advancement to the seventh level of Seamless, in the past, the rate by which the length of his telekinetic threads increased was around 200 per hour. Now, however, the number surged to 3000 per hour.

In just the space of one day, the number of his telekinetic threads had exceeded 300,000, and his cultivation of Seamless also advanced to the eighth level.

After that, his cultivation speed for Seamless reduced slightly, but he could still condense 2000 telekinetic threads in an hour.

Three days went by, just like that. After having breakfast early in the morning, Lin Huang retrieved Yang Ling’s package from the front desk.

Upon opening it, inside he found four identity rings, each of them slightly different in shape and form.

He tried each of them on and checked them over, making sure that there were no problems before putting three of them away and wearing the remaining one. After that, he headed straight for the outpost of the Death Sickle branch.

After ten minutes or so, he once more obtained the status of a reserve member of Death Sickle.

“Name: Huang Mu”

“Tribe: Unknown”

“Combat Level: Ninth-rank True God”

“Cultivation: Psychic”

…

“As long as I use enough disguises, no one will know who I really am!” Lin Huang grinned.

For this name, he used half of Lin and half of Huang, then reversed the two.1

Not knowing one’s tribe was a common occurrence in the God Territory. There were many tribes in the God Territory, and many children were orphaned after birth, not knowing which tribe they belonged to.

For his combat level, Lin Huang disguised himself as a ninth-rank True God to avoid drawing unwanted attention if he advanced too quickly when the time came.

As for his cultivation path, since everyone knew he was a sword cultivator when he was in the Great Heaven Territory previously, he most definitely could not use swords openly. Otherwise, it was inevitable that people would suspect that he was somehow connected to Xie Lin, who had obtained the Great Heaven inheritance. Additionally, an occupation like Imperial Censor was extremely rare in the God Territory, so he could only choose to be a psychic.

Lin Huang made a copy of this identity information and forwarded it to Buried Heaven.

About half an hour later, Buried Heaven sent the invitation letter over directly, without saying a single word.

However, Lin Huang still replied with a “Thank you!”

Now that he had the invitation letter to God Capital’s secret territory, Lin Huang felt like a burden had been lifted off his shoulders.

He went downstairs to check out of his room, then returned to the Great Heaven Palace straight away.

After setting a reminder for his departure date, Lin Huang crushed a Time Cabin Card and stepped into it, once again going into closed-door cultivation.

Sitting cross-legged in the Time Cabin, Lin Huang cultivated Seamless this round.

After all, since he wanted to appear as a psychic, he intended to make use of this period—just over a month—to strengthen his Divine Telekinesis so he could face the upcoming trip to the secret territory.

After his cultivation of Seamless advanced to the eighth level, the speed by which his telekinetic threads lengthened had reduced to 2000 per hour. However, in comparison to before his elevation to true god-level, this speed was already a lot higher.

His past three days of cultivation had already allowed his telekinetic threads to surge to 370,000.

Now that he had entered the Time Cabin, he did not have a minute to lose. He even completely disregarded his times for eating, drinking, and sleeping, devoting himself entirely to cultivating Seamless.

The telekinetic threads increased at a rate of 48,000 every day.

In just thirteen days, the number surged to one million, elevating him to a new level of Seamless—the ninth level!

At this point, the speed at which Lin Huang’s telekinetic threads lengthened dropped once again to 1000 per hour.

Despite this, Lin Huang did not stop cultivating.

The daily speed at which his telekinetic threads lengthened was maintained at 24,000.

In the Time Cabin, time passed day by day.

It took Lin Huang less than eighty-four days for his telekinetic threads to surge to three million, and he finally made another breakthrough in his cultivation of Seamless, reaching the legendary tenth level.

At this point, Seamless, which Lin Huang had obtained from Qi Muxiong, had reached the end of its cultivation process.

As a matter of fact, when Qi Muxiong derived the ten levels of Seamless back in the day, he himself had only cultivated it till the ninth level. He did not know what the tenth level was like.

However, at this moment, Lin Huang’s impression of this level was deeply profound.

He could clearly sense that after reaching the tenth level, his Divine Telekinesis seemed to possess the ability to split itself; he did not need the guidance of his consciousness at all for him to put Seamless into use.

Even the speed at which his telekinetic threads were lengthening had not slowed down in the least, maintaining a rate of 1000 per hour.

Based on this kind of speed, Lin Huang estimated that the number of his telekinetic threads would automatically exceed ten million within a year.

His cultivation of Seamless had entered autopilot mode, and Lin Huang was extremely pleased to see this.

If this were the case, as long as no problems arose, he could allow Seamless to cultivate on autopilot mode completely, and he could devote his time and energy to other matters. He only needed to check on it from time to time.

After coming out from the automatic cultivation state of Seamless, Lin Huang crushed another Time Cabin Card, extending the time to one hundred days.

After scrutinizing the autopilot mode of Seamless for several minutes and ensuring that there were no issues, only then did he shift his attention toward his Sword Dao.

Although his disguise in the God Territory this time did not allow him to openly use swords, Sword Dao was his main cultivation path. Since he had extra time, the first thing he thought of, naturally, was upgrading his Sword Dao.

Immersing his consciousness into Great Heaven’s inheritance memory, Lin Huang rapidly began learning even more sword skills.

He did not know whether it was because of his elevation to true god-level, or because his cultivation of Seamless had caused his Divine Telekinesis to strengthen greatly—or even perhaps because his Sword Dao had evolved to True Self Level, or because of some other reason… Lin Huang now realized that his speed of learning for sword skills was astronomically faster than before.

Originally, at most, he could only learn around 350 types of mythical-level sword skills in a day. However, he basically only needed a single glance to learn a new skill now. This was because, with one look, his mind could automatically deduce the workings of the entire sword skill, even to where he could automatically correct and modify the original skill itself.

Within the mere space of a day, he learned more than eighty thousand mythical-level sword skills—practically almost one skill every second.

He only used less than nine days to increase the original number of sword skills he had mastered from three hundred thousand to more than a million.

Although the number of sword skills he mastered had exceeded one million, Lin Huang still could not manage a further breakthrough to reach Sword Dao heavenly rule-level.

He was not bothered by this, merely glancing at the number of sword skills he had mastered before shifting his attention to even higher-level sword skills—supreme god-level sword skills!

His learning speed for supreme god-level sword skills reduced visibly, and he only mastered around one thousand five hundred skills in an entire day.

Lin Huang had few complaints about this kind of learning speed. After all, these were supreme god-level sword skills that contained rules.

It was difficult for ordinary True Gods to master hundreds of sword skills, even if they specialized in sword cultivation.

However, he could learn thousands of sword skills in a day.

He closed his eyes and meditated, flipping through these sword skills in his mind while simultaneously running through implied simulations with them in his head.

The number of supreme god-level sword skills he mastered kept increasing as well.

Inside the Time Cabin, two months passed by in the blink of an eye.

The number of supreme god-level sword skills Lin Huang had mastered finally broke through to the one hundred thousand mark.

At that very moment, it was as if he had pierced through a barrier in his mind. In an instant, he had an even clearer perspective of Sword Dao.

Within him, the True Self Level of his Sword Dao true meaning was shattering inch by inch, transforming and condensing into a force of will similar to the world will of the gravel world.

At this point, the Sword Soul within Lin Huang’s body opened its eyes and roared, its body expanding at a rate that was visible to the naked eye.

After breaking through to True Self Level, the Sword Soul had originally been almost exactly the same in height and form as Lin Huang, but now it expanded into a towering giant within a mere few seconds. The blood-red battle sword in the giant’s hands also grew larger.

On the massive blade, the golden seal tactics lit up once again, and the living creature-like golden patterns began undergoing minuscule changes that were visible to the naked eye. A moment later, the golden glow on the sword blade gradually faded away. The seal tactics slowly re-emerged on both sides of the sword hilt in relief form. Although they were similar to the ones before, they had visibly become more complicated.

Lin Huang tried to look at the seal tactics again, but he still became dizzy and immediately withdrew his gaze.

“Is this Sword Dao heavenly rule-level?!”

After sensing the changes in himself, Lin Huang could clearly feel that his Sword Dao had strengthened countless times over.

He felt that he would be invincible as long as he had a sword in hand.

However, he also knew that this was a normal illusion.

There were three levels of Sword Dao heavenly rule, namely Heavenly Sword, Heavenly Heart, and Heavenly Dao.

What was regarded as Heavenly Dao-level was an invincible level where there could be only one sword to conquer all.

Of course, one was not truly invincible, but this was the state of mind at this level.

Once they had reached Sword Dao heavenly rule-level, sword cultivators would automatically condense sword force.

In this world, sword force was not an illusory thing such as described in novels, but a type of substantive power derived from spiritual-layer oppressive power. More precisely, it was a spiritual-layer attack technique derived from Sword Dao.

Sword cultivators at heavenly rule-level only needed to release their sword force without even lifting a finger, and this was enough to severely injure several true god-level powerhouses whose soul strength was weaker.

To put it another way, Sword Dao heavenly rule was actually a type of god sequence chain, but a more unique one.

Its level divisions were completely different from that of god sequence chains. Besides having power similar to that of god sequence chains, it also possessed many characteristics of the sword itself…

After sensing the Sword Dao changes within him, Lin Huang glanced at the time remaining in the Time Cabin. There were 27 days left.

He did not intend to waste this time and continued to sit cross-legged with his eyes closed, learning more sword skills and strengthening his newly-evolved Sword Dao heavenly rule.

Now that he had advanced to Sword Dao heavenly rule-level, he also became aware that his sword skill cultivation speed had increased. Based on the time he took to learn a sword skill, he roughly estimated that the one thousand five hundred supreme god-level sword skills he could initially learn in a day had now skyrocketed to thirty thousand a day…

He was even able to vaguely comprehend some of the Holy sword skills that he had initially been completely unable to understand.

After advancing to Sword Dao heavenly rule-level, Lin Huang used four days’ worth of time to learn a further one hundred and twenty thousand supreme god-level sword skills. Next, he spent another day fully mastering and consolidating all the sword skill inheritances below supreme god-level that he had obtained.

Only then did he start shifting his focus toward a Holy sword skill in Great Heaven’s inheritance memory…

Twenty-two days later, the Time Cabin transformed into glimmers of starlight that dissipated, but Lin Huang still sat cross-legged in the same spot, continuing to derive that specific Holy sword skill…

For the next twenty days or so, he remained seated in this position on the floor of the Great Heaven Palace and did not move an inch, as if he had turned into a stone sculpture.

He did not use a Time Cabin Card any further—instead, he continued deriving at the normal speed of time.

It was not until three days before the opening of the secret territory that Lin Huang finally opened his eyes.

He exhaled a long breath. “At least I’ve gotten that seen to before going into the secret territory!”

Li Huang was not referring to the cultivation of his Holy sword skill. He had actually used less than a week to derive and cultivate it successfully.

Since then, he had been reading through thousands of Holy sword skills stored in Great Heaven’s inheritance memory. He did not cultivate these sword skills, however—instead, he specifically searched for methods of using Sword Dao heavenly rule that were contained within the skills. Then, he did a round of practice and inference in his mind, which was why he had used up more than half a month on this.

Glancing at the time and noting that there were still three days left before the secret territory opened, Lin Huang then rose immediately and opened the doors to step outside.

“Lord Swordmaster!” Sensing Lin Huang’s aura, astonishment flashed through Sword1’s eyes. As a powerful sword cultivator, he could clearly feel that Lin Huang’s Sword Dao had already broken through to heavenly rule-level.

He was instantly shocked—the swordmaster had only been in closed-door cultivation for over a month, and his abilities had already undergone such terrifying improvement!

Lin Huang paid no attention to Sword1’s astonishment and merely greeted him, before teleporting himself straight out of the Great Heaven Territory.

After putting on Thousand Face and a new identity ring, Lin Huang transformed himself into Huang Mu.

At present, he appeared to be around twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old. He now had a beard; he also wore black robes and had long hair, giving off a dispirited vibe.

Wearing a hood gave him a somewhat treacherous air.

His manner was completely different from that of Lin Huang himself, as well as the previous Xie Lin.

He felt sure that no one would be able to make the connection between this identity and Xie Lin.

Prior to entering the secret territory, he did not need to prepare anything.

His weapons, armor, and other equipment were God Weapons that possessed the potential for growth. When he evolved to true god-level, they had automatically transformed to Rank-3 and were comparable to top-notch god sequence relics.

He could use them to fight beginner or intermediate-stage Heavenly Gods; furthermore, the highest combat strength allowed into the secret territory was only ninth-rank true god-level.

However, he still made a trip to the marketplace in Devil Hunter Star Zone to see if he might be able to pick up any treasures there, but his main purpose was to buy some food.

Actually, true god-level powerhouses were able to survive in a vacuum, and for a long time as well. The ones who had mastered Light Rule were even able to rely on reflected light from planets; they did not require direct light from stars. With just this, they could survive till the end of their lives.

Lin Huang had stopped needing food or water a while back, but he still maintained his original eating habits.

Although he could not really be counted as a true gourmet, he could genuinely be considered an epicure.

At present, eating had turned from a necessity into a sort of hobby.

Whenever he had an idle moment, he would snack on something. After all, he would not get fat.

Lin Huang spent one day strolling around Devil Hunter Star Zone. Apart from buying some food, he did not really find anything else of note, so he made a detour directly to the assembly point that Buried Heaven had mentioned—the Undead Shelter.

The Undead Shelter was a grade-6 shelter, which was also the headquarters of a grade-6 organization known as Undead.

Although Undead was one of the more ordinary grade-6 organizations, it had a good relationship with many grade-5, grade-6, and grade-7 organizations. Many major organizations had established their own branches at the Undead Shelter.

Death Sickle also had a branch here, and the Undead branch was one of the three largest branches apart from Death Sickle’s headquarters itself.

Besides the dozen or so grade-6 organizations, including Death Sickle, the three major grade-7 organizations—Divine Clapnet, Precious Treasure Pavilion, and the Combat God Temple—had also established branches here.

In addition, the Undead Shelter’s extremely prosperous service industry and its excellent customer service had rapidly led to it becoming one of the top grade-6 shelters.

Even heavenly god-level powerhouses frequently appeared here as well—numerous ones, in fact.

Upon arriving at the Undead Shelter, the first thing Lin Huang did was not to look for a hotel but to stroll around the various marketplaces.

After visiting Precious Treasure Pavilion’s marketplace, Lin Huang went on to visit several small marketplaces until nightfall, then went to look around the black market.

In the end, he remained empty-handed.

It was not that there was a lack of good items. Lin Huang saw a great many excellent items but did not make a bid for them.

On one hand, they were non-essential items.

In the section for weapons, armor, and the like, there were excellent god sequence relics. Lin Huang even saw two sets of telekinetic weapons that tempted him slightly. However, the problem was that he currently already had God Weapons and no longer needed these things.

On the other hand, he did not see any hidden treasures that might interest him.

Whether at the marketplace or the black market, all the good items he saw were priced appropriately. As for the cheap bargains, using his keen eye and the strength of his Divine Telekinesis, he did not find very much that was good among them.

Perhaps there might have been good items there earlier, but they could have already been snapped up by others.

He strolled around the marketplace for the entire day. By the time he left the black market, it was already past nine o’clock at night.

Lin Huang had great difficulty before finally managing to book a good hotel. By the time he checked in, it was nearly ten-thirty.

He stayed at the Undead Shelter for a night. Only after having his breakfast the next day did Lin Huang set out unhurriedly for the Death Sickle branch.

Upon arriving at his destination, Lin Huang walked straight into the first-floor conference room.

This was the assembly point that Buried Heaven had arranged.

As he entered the conference room, Lin Huang discovered that there were people present already.

There were even many familiar faces.

As both Virtual Gods and True Gods were able to enter the secret territory, Fallen Star, Destiny, and Twin were all on the invitation list as well.

In addition to the three people he knew, Lin Huang also recognized Virtuoso, who was ranked first on the White Sickle Leaderboard.

They looked the same as before, wearing black robes that enveloped their entire body and a white mask on their face.

As soon as Lin Huang pushed the door open and walked in, everybody’s gaze shifted to him.

This was because those who had received an invitation letter from Death Sickle were practically the strongest powerhouses on the Black Sickle and White Sickle Leaderboards, so everyone was acquainted with each other.

As for Lin Huang, everyone present was completely unfamiliar with his face and could not remember when such a fellow had joined Death Sickle.

Under normal circumstances, Lin Huang would have definitely taken the initiative to go and greet everyone. However, his current identity set-up was that of a dispirited youngster who was not interested in anything. He merely glanced at the others, walked straight to a front-row seat away from the rest, and sat down by himself.

Behind, he could hear several people gossiping about him, but he chose to ignore them.

“This guy must be new, right? I don’t think I’ve seen him on the ranking list.”

“His aura isn’t weak. He’s a ninth-rank True God, but I don’t know how strong his abilities are.”

“Is that new guy so snobbish that he won’t even come and say hello?”

However, what Lin Huang did not notice was that as everyone else was busy discussing among themselves, Virtuoso kept staring at his back, gaze unwavering…

At eight o’clock sharp in the morning, Buried Heaven arrived promptly.

In the presence of the members of Death Sickle’s inner circle, he revealed himself using his original appearance—a white-haired young man, less than 1.6 meters tall.

As soon as he entered the room, he saw Lin Huang sitting in the first row, seemingly not getting along with everyone else.

At the sight of Lin Huang, he was taken aback for a moment. Although he was not a sword cultivator, he was a well-known figure who was among the top-tier Heavenly Gods, and he could clearly sense that Lin Huang’s Sword Dao had broken through to heavenly rule-level.

Looking away from Lin Huang discreetly, he glanced at the other people sitting at the back. When he saw the expressions on their faces, he immediately understood what was happening.

He said to Lin Huang, “Newcomer, why don’t you briefly introduce yourself?”

Lin Huang nodded. He stood up, turned to look at the people behind him, and took off his hood. “I’m Xiu Mu, and I’ve just recently joined Death Sickle. I’ll be in your care.”

Huang Mu was the real name of this identity, while Xiu Mu was the code name that he had applied for in Death Sickle.

After this simple introduction, Lin Huang turned around and sat back down again.

Buried Heaven raised his brows at Lin Huang’s brevity; he guessed that Lin Huang was probably putting on an act.

The others in the conference room were rather dissatisfied with this, however.

“This fellow is saying that he’ll be in our care, but there’s nothing in his expression or his attitude that makes it seem like he needs our care, is there?”

“What a terrible personality this fellow has!”

“He sure has some balls, acting so arrogant even in front of Senior Buried Heaven!”

Naturally, Lin Huang heard these grumblings, but he could not be bothered to respond to them.

The corners of Buried Heaven’s lips quirked up slightly. Conversely, he found Lin Huang’s role-playing very amusing.

“Alright, since everyone else already knows each other, there’s no need for further introductions.

“Everyone’s already here, so we’ll head out now.”

As soon as he said that, Buried Heaven shook the cuff of his sleeve, and a green-colored snake as thick as a pinky finger shot out, landing on the conference table.

The little snake merely opened its mouth slightly, and Lin Huang, along with the other six people, rapidly shrank in size, turning into tiny particles that were swallowed up by the tiny snake.

After swallowing the seven of them, the little black snake transformed into a python, and in a flash, Buried Heaven stepped up on top of its head.

The next instant, a black whirlpool appeared out of nowhere, and the black python slid into it, bringing Buried Heaven along.

A moment of dizziness and darkness later, when Lin Huang and the others were spat out by the python, they found themselves already in an expanse of void.

Lin Huang looked around. Buried Heaven—who was standing to one side—had long since changed his appearance into that of a muscular man who was more than two meters tall.

The six people who had been in the conference room previously were all present as well.

In addition to the few participants from Death Sickle, more than a dozen organizations had also arrived, each forming a small group. The number of people was quite small.

Lin Huang even saw two grade-7 organizations that had sent only ten people—five Virtual Gods and five True Gods, no less.

Just when Lin Huang was wondering if this secret territory had a limit for the number of participants, Destiny could not help speaking up from where he was standing to one side.

“Master Buried Heaven, even the grade-7 organizations have sent so few people. Is this because the secret territory has a limit on the number of participants?”

“That’s not the reason.” Before Buried Heaven could even open his mouth, a True God beside them spoke up, “It’s because the hunts in this secret territory hunting are solo battles, and each person’s hunting points count only toward themselves. That’s why the major organizations have selected only the strongest powerhouses within their own organizations. This is also to prevent weaklings from joining, so as not to disgrace the entire organization through earning hunting points that are far too low.”

He deliberately glanced at Lin Huang as he delivered this last sentence.

This True God was Wild Fiend, the current number three on Death Sickle’s White Sickle Leaderboard. His main reason for being upset with Lin Huang was that previously, Buried Heaven had announced that only three True Gods from Death Sickle would be entering the secret territory this time. This year, he had only managed to secure third place on the White Sickle Leaderboard after much difficulty and had very nearly lost the position to other people. However, this limited spot that he had managed to obtain only after a year of hard work had been easily secured by a newcomer, in a complete departure from the rules. Naturally, he was extremely displeased.

Lin Huang had no idea how precious his spot was. He had only asked Buried Heaven for it because he needed it, and Buried Heaven had immediately agreed. Buried Heaven had not mentioned how scarce these spots were either.

Of course, he could pick up the indirect barb in Wild Fiend’s words, but he did not know why the other showed such animosity toward him. He assumed that his previous attitude had upset Wild Fiend, so he just ignored the other’s provocation.

In Lin Huang’s opinion, such low-level provocation was meaningless. If the other party were genuinely capable, he should be thinking about how to crush Lin Huang in terms of hunting points, instead of verbally making oblique accusations at him before the hunt had even begun.

Seeing that Lin Huang did not rise to the bait, Wild Fiend did not continue being aggressive.

On the one hand, Senior Buried Heaven was right there, so Wild Fiend could not simply antagonize Lin Huang. On the other hand, there were also many other organizations in the vicinity, and it would not reflect well if others were to witness internal conflict within Death Sickle.

The truth was, if it were not for his apprehension at Buried Heaven’s presence, he might have directly started a fight with Lin Huang when they were still in the conference room.

What Wild Fiend did not know, however, was that he was lucky.

If he had chosen to make a move against Lin Huang at that time, there was a high chance that he might have immediately lost this opportunity to enter the secret territory.

Ignoring the murmurs of the people beside him, Lin Huang directed his gaze toward the other organizations’ sites.

The participants from the two grade-7 organizations—the Combat God Temple and Xeno—had all arrived. He even saw a few familiar faces, such as Unrivaled God from the Combat God Temple, and Frontier from Xeno…

More than a year had passed, yet these old acquaintances, just like Fallen Star and the others, were still at virtual god-level rank-9. However, their auras had obviously become much stronger than before.

Just when Lin Huang felt regretful that he had left this group of individuals far behind him in terms of advancement, a figure suddenly leaned over from beside him.

“Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

Surprisingly enough, the speaker was the black-robed Virtuoso. Their voice was very neutral, and it was impossible to make out whether they were male or female.

Lin Huang turned around to look at Virtuoso and smiled as he answered a touch mockingly, “You’ll have to take your mask off for me to have a look, then I’ll know if we’ve met before or not.”

As the few Death Sickle members were wondering why Virtuoso had taken an interest in this newcomer, they heard what Lin Huang said, and their expressions immediately became rather odd.

“Are you sure you want me to remove my mask?” Under Virtuoso’s white mask, red lips quirked up slightly.

However, their mask was actually concealing their lips. Logically speaking, Lin Huang should not have been able to make out any expression on the other’s face, but he definitely saw the corners of their lips curl up.

Right at this point, Buried Heaven could no longer keep silent. “The secret territory is opening soon—both of you better not cause any trouble!”

Lin Huang noticed something unusual in Buried Heaven’s tone as he said that, and guessed that something might happen if the other party were to remove their mask. Judging from the expressions on the others’ faces, it was not likely to be anything good.

This made Lin Huang a little curious as to the abilities of this fellow who was ranked first on the White Sickle Leaderboard.

This secret prisoner territory of God Capital had existed for more than seven hundred thousand years and had also been opened up countless times.

After collaborating with other major organizations and taking in more prisoners, the frequency of this place being opened had increased significantly. Currently, it was made accessible once every two to three hundred years.

Therefore, in the beginning, the team leaders from the major organizations were those at peak heavenly god-level. The standard had then slowly lowered to ninth-rank heavenly god-level, then even further to high-rank True Gods. Up until now, the team leaders’ abilities were still getting lower in level, to the point where some high-rank Heavenly Gods of certain organizations would let those at medium-rank lead the team if they themselves were unavailable. Basically, there were very few team leaders who were at ninth-rank.

Therefore, everyone was surprised when they saw Buried Heaven, wondering why he was the one leading Death Sickle’s team this time.

As a top figure among those at heavenly god-level, Buried Heaven could be said to rank higher than everyone else present, whether in terms of ability or seniority.

As soon as he arrived, practically all the team leaders of other organizations took the initiative to greet him. Even the team leaders of the two grade-7 organizations were no exception.

This was even more apparent for the teams that arrived after Death Sickle, with some team leaders even taking the initiative to approach him with a few words of greeting. After all, outside of Death Sickle, it was extremely difficult for other people to have any contact at all with Buried Heaven.

By around eight-fifty in the morning, everyone was present.

Lin Huang also saw both Kylie and Bloody among those from the Nephilic Judge Tribe. The two women had only been able to recognize Lin Huang through the contract sense of their cards.

However, they only glanced briefly at each other before all three of them looked away.

What gave Lin Huang a sense of satisfaction was that Kylie was already at ninth-rank true god-level, while Bloody had also elevated to eighth-rank.

The team leader from the Nephilic Judge Tribe was also the only other ninth-rank Heavenly God present, apart from Buried Heaven.

Nevertheless, when he arrived and saw Buried Heaven, he had greeted him with a “Sir.”

“After entering, all of you will be randomly teleported to an area that matches your combat level. Virtual God rank-9s will be teleported to an area where there are Virtual God rank-9 prisoners, while ninth-rank True Gods will also be teleported to an area where ninth-rank True God prisoners roam.

“On top of that, you’ll only earn hunting points by hunting prisoners with either the same combat level or a higher combat level than yourselves. You won’t get any hunting points if you hunt prisoners with lower combat levels.

“One more thing—I’ve also emphasized this in the information that I sent to you. These prisoners are not the low-IQ monsters that you’ve hunted before, and they’ll use any method possible to try and kill you in order to survive.

“Although the rules don’t allow hunters and prisoners to team up, and every fight has to be one-on-one, the prisoners will certainly use their surroundings to their advantage—they may even set traps.

“Every energy fluctuation arising from your battles will expose your position and attract these prisoners to come and investigate. You should know that the individuals confined in this sort of place are mostly lunatics. Even if they weren’t lunatics before being imprisoned here, it wouldn’t have taken long for them to turn into one.

“You want to hunt these prisoners to get hunting points, while they want to hunt you even more to get resources!

“Everything I’ve just mentioned was included in the information that I sent out more than a month ago. I’m re-emphasizing these things now because I fear some of you might not have read the information at all.” Buried Heaven’s gaze swept over Lin Huang’s group, his eyes purposefully lingering on Virtuoso for a moment. It was obvious that he was referring to Virtuoso.

Virtuoso paid no heed to Buried Heaven’s words, however, and just acted like none of this had anything to do with them.

Just like Lin Huang, they did not hold Buried Heaven in as high a regard as the others did.

Buried Heaven also noticed Virtuoso’s wandering attention, cleared his throat, and then continued, “There’s one last thing I would like to emphasize once again. The entire secret prisoner territory is under the supervision of God Capital. Whatever you do inside the secret territory, we can clearly see it from the outside. During the entire hunting process, all of you are only allowed to hunt prisoners and monsters from the secret territory. Do not attack hunters who are members of other organizations, and especially do not attack members of your own organization!”

Buried Heaven glanced at both Virtuoso and Lin Huang when he said this. He was a little worried that the slightest disagreement between the two would cause them to start fighting inside the secret territory.

“Once someone is discovered to have attacked a fellow hunter contestant, they will be severely punished once they come out!”

Upon hearing this, Virtuoso could not help curling their lips, staring at Lin Huang with a smile. “Such boring game rules.”

Lin Huang chuckled as well. Obviously, Virtuoso had not looked through the information sent out by Buried Heaven, but Lin Huang had read it. Therefore, he knew very well that Buried Heaven had described the rules more stringently to prevent himself and Virtuoso from fighting.

In fact, the rule of the secret territory was that one could attack other hunters within a limited range. Sharing pointers was allowed, as long as one did not kill or incapacitate others, conduct malicious sneak attacks, or plot deliberate set-ups.

As long as hunters behaved appropriately, they could move against each other.

God Capital even encouraged the plundering of points. As long as both parties set the amount in advance, the loser had to pay the winner the forfeit agreed upon.

Even other hunters could use their own points to place bets on the winner or loser if they were spectators.

“I have a question,” Virtuoso seemed to have suddenly thought of something, and asked Buried Heaven, “If other hunters attack me first, can I kill them?”

“You can fight back, but you can’t kill or incapacitate them, nor can you deliberately set them up.” After Buried Heaven said this, he emphasized yet again, “Whatever you do in the secret territory can be clearly seen from the outside at any given moment. Whether there is any subjective malice or not, I believe that can be easily determined by everyone.”

“These rules are so childish, just like little kids playing house,” Virtuoso complained in some dissatisfaction.

“Alright, if you have any other questions, please ask now.” Buried Heaven eyed the time. “The secret territory will open in less than five minutes.”

“I have a question,” Lin Huang did not ask this question out loud, but directed it to Buried Heaven through voice transmission, “In the secret territory, is the accumulation of hunting points based on each person’s actual combat level, or their combat level after disguise?”

“After disguise. To be precise, it’s the combat level that you registered with,” Buried Heaven replied via voice transmission, “Your hunting points are calculated by the staff of God Capital based on the number of hunts and the level of the target in question. In fact, they can’t see your combat level through the monitoring screen at all, so they can only calculate based on the registration information provided by the major organizations.

“There have been no previous cases of fraud regarding such matters. On one hand, the major organizations are full of people who value their pride. In a minor competition such as this, there’s no need to resort to fraud, because if it were discovered, one would become the laughing stock of the entire God Territory. On the other hand, the participants are basically all virtual god-level rank-9 and ninth-rank True Gods—very few people of other combat levels take part. Once they appear, the major organizations will probably notice them, so it would be difficult to cheat.” When Buried Heaven said this, he cast a glance at Bloody from the Nephilic Judge Tribe.

“Then, the combat level that you signed me up for is…” Lin Huang asked.

“Didn’t you ask me to register you as ninth-rank true god-level?” Buried Heaven returned matter-of-factly.

‘Did you not just say that there have been no previous cases of fraud?!’

Lin Huang exclaimed silently in his heart. He had asked because he was worried that Buried Heaven had registered him as a first-rank.

He did not expect, however, that the direct and honest Buried Heaven would have no sense of deception whatsoever and had even answered him with such confidence.

At nine in the morning, the Heavenly God team leader of God Capital opened the gates of the secret territory.

Hunters from more than twenty organizations stepped forward one after the other.

First up were a few grade-7 organizations; all the hunters from the grade-7 organizations entered the arena.

The Heavenly God team leader of God Capital looked over at the Death Sickle team.

“Senior Buried Heaven, please go ahead with your team.”

Since each person would be teleported to a different location, and the hunters were not allowed to plunder each other, the order in which they entered the secret territory was actually irrelevant.

Everyone else did not have any opinions about Death Sickle being the first to enter the arena after the grade-7 organizations, given it was one of the top grade-6 organizations, and Buried Heaven was leading the team this time around.

Lin Huang discreetly glanced in the direction of the Nephilic Judge Tribe, then followed the rest of the Death Sickle team through the gates of the secret territory.

As soon as he stepped through the gates, Lin Huang could clearly sense a dimensional force enveloping his whole body and pulling him into another space entirely.

By the time this feeling faded, he was already in a completely different area.

The dry, cracked ground in front of him showed absolutely no traces of life, not even a blade of grass.

He estimated that the temperature in the air was at least two hundred degrees Celsius. Together with the occasional waves of heat, it felt as if he were inside an air fryer.

Such a climate was obviously not suitable for the survival of regular living beings. Such a high temperature alone would be enough to turn most non-transcendents into dried meat.

A glance over the area showed there were barely any plants, let alone animals.

Lin Huang surveyed his surroundings once through, then activated his Divine Telekinesis.

After a while, he frowned slightly.

“This place is certainly a prison. The restrictions on Divine Telekinesis are so severe…”

After Lin Huang evolved into a True God, the strength of his Divine Telekinesis had transformed once again. Together with his diligent cultivation of Seamless, under normal conditions, the current strength of his Divine Telekinesis would have had enough range to cover a star zone.

However, in this secret prisoner territory, his Divine Telekinesis—which was comparable to that of a Heavenly God—was limited to a 30-kilometer probing range, and the strength of the suppression far exceeded that of even the Battlefield of the Dragon Abyss previously.

Seeing that his own Divine Telekinesis was already so severely restricted, he could guess the extent to which the other hunters’ Divine Telekinesis had been suppressed.

“Space-type rules have practically been prohibited…” Lin Huang secretly mobilized various Rule Bending Powers and quickly discovered that the Space Rules of this secret territory were also severely restricted.

After adjusting to this new environment, Lin Huang turned his gaze in a specific direction.

Earlier on, while probing with his Divine Telekinesis, two individuals had appeared within detectable range. Both of them were virtual god-level rank-9s, and the one who was closer was less than five kilometers away from him. (TN: This appears to be a typo on the author’s part; the two should be at ninth-rank true god-level, but we have opted to translate it as it is.)

This individual was a bald, well-built man of more than two meters in height. His muscles were so toned they looked terrifying.

Judging solely from appearances, it was very likely that he was a combat cultivator powerhouse.

“He looks very strong.” If Lin Huang were to compare the two individuals he had detected solely on the strength of their auras, this bald man within closer range was much stronger than the other individual.

Lin Huang quickly selected his hunting target. In just a single move, he appeared right in front of the bald man almost instantaneously.

What he had utilized was not Space Rule, but a speed type Light Enlightenment.

He had wanted to take this opportunity to hunt down some heavenly god-level powerhouses, but since his every move was being monitored, that would inevitably expose his abilities to a certain degree.

Therefore, he had no intention of hiding his power, but he did not intend to use his Sword Dao or his summoning beasts either.

The bald man saw Lin Huang suddenly appear, and an expression of evident shock showed on his face for a moment.

He was a combat cultivator, and the strength of his Divine Telekinesis was very weak. Within this prison, the detection radius of his Divine Telekinesis was less than one kilometer; it was far less than the range of one’s line of sight.

Therefore, every time the trial was held, he would wait for a hunter to approach him first.

This time around was no exception, but he had not expected that a hunter would come to him so quickly.

Sensing that Lin Huang’s aura was only at ordinary ninth-rank true god-level without the abnormal strength of a gifted genius, the bald man’s mouth curled up into a cruel smile.

Not the slightest hint of fear could be seen in his gaze as he looked at Lin Huang; in fact, it was as if he were looking at a lamb waiting to be slaughtered.

“How unlucky that I was the first one you ran into, little brat. You can only blame yourself for your bad luck.” The bald man grinned.

“I think you might be confused as to who’s the one with bad luck here.” Lin Huang smiled faintly.

“What an arrogant little brat!”

As the bald man spoke, his body began to transform drastically at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Blood-red hair rapidly sprouted from his originally bald head, like a living creature emitting the stench of blood into the air.

His body also expanded rapidly—in the blink of an eye, he had shot to more than ten meters in height. His muscles bulged to the point of turning reddish-purple, and the surface of his skin condensed into a thick layer of horned scales.

His spine had undergone an even more drastic transformation. As a result of such intense physical expansion, half of his spine now protruded through his skin, turning into a centipede-like purplish-black carapace that covered most of his back. Even his tailbone had extended to more than ten meters past his feet, turning into a long bone-spur tail.

When he witnessed this, Lin Huang finally understood the reason for this individual’s imprisonment here.

“An Abyssal Protoss…”

An Abyssal Protoss was the result of a Protoss being corrupted and degenerated by Abyssal energy.

The Protoss were a proud race and had always regarded these Abyssal Protoss who had been corrupted by Abyssal energy as enemies. An organization made up of pure-blooded Protoss, such as God Capital, would detest them even more and would kill every one of them on sight. The fact that this bald man in front of him was alive and locked up in this prison meant that it was highly likely he had been sent here by an organization other than God Capital.

Lin Huang had attracted the attention of many spectators outside the secret territory the very moment when he and the bald man had encountered each other.

“So early on, and someone has already encountered Ba Lin. That’s such terrible luck that it’s positively terrifying!”

“Although Ba Lin’s strength is average, his defenses aren’t something that an ordinary ninth-rank True God can get past. To do that, one must have at least Control-level mastery of their rules. However, Control-level rules are only capable of breaking his defenses; it would still be difficult to actually kill him. That little brat is probably going to fail…”

“If I remember correctly, I think this little brat is a newcomer in Death Sickle?” As soon as someone said that, the numerous Heavenly Gods present turned their gazes toward Buried Heaven.

Buried Heaven’s expression was calm; he clearly had no intention of making any comments.

In the face of Buried Heaven’s silence, the rest immediately had all kinds of speculations. However, most of them felt that this newcomer’s abilities were probably nothing impressive.

“Why don’t we make a wager on this fight?” Someone suddenly suggested.

“I’m betting on Ba Lin with two mid-level god sequence relics!”

“I’m also betting on Ba Lin with one high-level god sequence relic!”

…

More than a dozen Heavenly Gods participated in the wager, and most of them bet on Ba Lin.

Seeing that there were more than ten people still who were not participating, the dealer shouted, “Does anyone else want to place a bet?!”

“Ten high-level god sequence relics…” Buried Heaven had quietly appeared next to the gambling area. “I’m betting on Xiu Mu.”

At the sight of Buried Heaven handing over ten god sequence relics to the dealer, a great many individuals instantly turned pale.

After all, Buried Heaven was the only person present who knew anything of the newcomer’s abilities.

Furthermore, he had wagered ten high-level god sequence relics right off, and it was obvious that he had not done so for the sake of Death Sickle’s dignity. He had to have been absolutely certain to place such a large bet.

The dealer’s face also paled slightly at the sight of the wager that Buried Heaven had handed over to him. He smiled obsequiously at Buried Heaven as he said, “Sir Buried Heaven, we’re just playing around; there’s no need for you to place such a large bet.”

Buried Heaven stared at the dealer wordlessly.

After a while, seeing that Buried Heaven refused to take the items back, the dealer had no choice but to accept the wager.

“Is there anyone else who wants to wager? If not, I’m closing the bets.”

As soon as he said that, several Heavenly Gods joined in. They all followed Buried Heaven in betting on Lin Huang, but they did not wager much.

Once everyone had finished placing their wagers, the dealer immediately closed the betting.

Everyone present looked toward the video feed, waiting for the final results of this fight…

Seeing the dramatic changes in his opponent’s body, Lin Huang did not immediately make a move but patiently waited for the other’s transformation to be completed.

Various thoughts rushed through the minds of the Heavenly Gods who were staring at the surveillance video.

If it were not for Buried Heaven wagering ten high-level god sequence relics during the betting, they might have all thought that this newcomer from Death Sickle had been frozen in shock by the scene before him, and had forgotten to seize the opportunity to either attack or escape.

However, most of them did not think that way now. They felt that this fellow named Xiu Mu was deliberately waiting for his opponent to complete his transformation so that he could exhibit his power by defeating a perfect enemy.

While it was true that Lin Huang was deliberately waiting for the other’s transformation to be complete, it was definitely not because he wanted to display his strength in front of all the Heavenly Gods. In fact, he did not actually want his every move to be monitored, so that he could unleash his full ability.

He was deliberately waiting for his opponent to finish transforming, only because he felt that the other was too weak before it, which really failed to pique much of his interest. After the transformation, at least the other’s defensive powers would be stronger, so Lin Huang would need to utilize his brain a little to estimate how many layers of rule power he should compound onto his telekinetic flying daggers.

“If I remember, in the information submitted by this little brat named Xiu Mu, it stated that he was a psychic. Against a combat cultivator such as Ba Lin, he’ll definitely find himself restricted.” Standing in front of the surveillance video, the Heavenly God team leader of God Capital suddenly laughed. “I’m guessing this fight will be very difficult for Xiu Mu.”

“Yes, psychics are restricted to a certain extent in the secret prisoner territory. Taking into consideration Ba Lin’s strong defenses, it’s really hard to tell who will win or lose in this fight…” another Heavenly God responded.

Both of them had put their bets on Ba Lin as the winner.

Buried Heaven was silent, not bothering to say anything to this group of people.

He knew that Lin Huang would definitely give him a pleasant surprise.

In the secret prisoner territory, Ba Lin’s aura had rapidly reached its peak after completing his transformation.

He had extreme confidence in himself currently. He was born with extremely strong defensive capabilities—his body was comparable to top-tier rule armor—in addition to the compounded effects of more than ten Control-level defense-type rules and Elemental Enlightenments. He was confident that as long as he did not encounter a top-tier true god-level powerhouse, he would be invincible. Even the vast majority of True Gods were unable to break his defenses.

Looking at Lin Huang, who was waiting nearby for him to complete his transformation, Ba Lin’s face twisted into a smirk.

“What an arrogant fellow!”

The next moment, he suddenly exerted force with both legs at the same time that his blackish-purple bone tail flicked toward the ground.

A huge crater instantly formed on the spot where he had been standing, and his figure vanished completely.

In a flash, he appeared right above Lin Huang as if he had teleported.

Evidently, his speed and flexibility had not diminished in the slightest, even after his physique had expanded. On the contrary, he had become even stronger than before.

Appearing in front of Lin Huang in the mere blink of an eye, Ba Lin drew back his lips in a grin, his killing intent surging. He raised his huge palm high and brought it down toward Lin Huang as if he were swatting a fly.

At this moment, however, the hitherto-stationary Lin Huang suddenly moved.

His actions were so minuscule that it had seemed like he had only shaken his sleeve slightly.

Almost simultaneously, a blood-red gleam shot out at a terrifying speed, resembling a ray of lightning as thin as a strand of hair flashing in the air.

The red gleam was so faint that it was barely perceptible, but the group of Heavenly Gods watching from the outer perimeters of the secret territory were all taken aback.

“That was so fast!”

“The attack speed of this telekinetic flying dagger is probably comparable to that of a heavenly god-level psychic!”

“Ba Lin’s been killed…”

As soon as someone within the group of Heavenly Gods said that, on the surveillance video, Ba Lin’s movements suddenly stopped, as if his image had completely frozen.

A second later, a gush of blackish-purple blood spurted out from his solar plexus, and a hole the diameter of a bucket appeared in that area. The hole had pierced through his chest and completely wiped out his life force.

“Seems like I used a bit too much power…” Lin Huang muttered in a low voice, then extended his telekinetic threads to twine them around Ba Lin’s dead body.

Lin Huang’s figure slowly floated over and stopped in front of Ba Lin’s head. His pupils turned a dark blue like that of a starry sky.

The Control-level god rule “Brain-read” immediately went to work.

Outside the secret territory, a group of Heavenly Gods was discussing the recent fight.

“Xiu Mu’s attack just now was enhanced with more than twenty types of Rule Bending Power. Not only was it able to break through Ba Lin’s defense so easily, but it was even able to kill him within seconds?!”

“Yes, it stands to reason that an attack like this that’s been boosted with more than twenty Control-level rules would certainly be able to break through Ba Lin’s defense, but it shouldn’t have been able to kill him instantly.”

“You’re both not wrong about the number of rules or about them being at Control-level. However, that’s not the issue—it’s that telekinetic flying dagger.” At this moment, a Heavenly God spoke up and reminded them, “If I’m not mistaken, that telekinetic flying dagger is a god sequence relic.”

The conversation suddenly flagged, but more enthusiastic discussions followed soon after.

Inside the secret territory, Lin Huang’s instant killing of Ba Lin made him the first hunter to earn hunting points.

On the Hunter’s Gold Leaderboard, the name “Xiu Mu” directly appeared at the top of the list. Although he had merely accrued 1 point, his was still the only name on the list.

Currently, there was no name on the Hunter’s Silver Leaderboard for Virtual Gods, which was below the Gold Leaderboard.

The whole process of entering the secret territory, locking onto his target, and killing it had actually taken Lin Huang less than ten seconds.

In such a short time, most hunters had not even located hunting targets yet, let alone killed them.

Therefore, the fact that Lin Huang had successfully carried out a hunt so quickly immediately attracted the attention of many hunters within the secret territory.

“So fast?! That kill was completed in less than ten seconds after entering?! What good luck that fellow has, running into a hunting target right off the bat!”

“The kill was carried out extremely quickly, and the fact that no accidents occurred means that the opponent was immediately eliminated. If he can kill off a fellow ninth-rank, this fellow called Xiu Mu is definitely no weakling!”

“Xiu Mu, I’ve never heard of this name before. Which organization is this newcomer from?!”

…

Lin Huang was not aware of the commotion that he had caused. After killing Ba Lin, he had immediately read through the memories in the other’s mind.

Although he had obtained quite a lot of information about the secret territory from Buried Heaven, the secret territory was quite vast. The range of Lin Huang’s Divine Telekinesis had been severely restricted from the moment he was teleported in, so he had no idea where he was or what the situation around him was like.

After spending a few minutes reading through Ba Lin’s memories, Lin Huang quickly figured out his current coordinates as well as which direction he should head for next.

“Before meeting Kylie and Bloody, I have to hunt down some Heavenly Gods and obtain a grade-5 Advance Card…”

The purpose of his trip here was very clear. Participation in the hunt came second; the most important thing was to meet up with Kylie so he could use the grade-5 Advance Card to help her complete her advancement to pure spirit-level rank-6. This was also the single most reliable way to help Kylie get out of her current situation.

After acquiring Ba Lin’s memories, Lin Huang headed straight toward the area where the Heavenly God prisoners were being held.

He did not bother wasting any time. All the prisoners he encountered along the way he killed with a single attack, not even bothering to wait for them to speak.

In the short space of less than an hour, he had killed more than ten ninth-rank true god-level prisoners, and now securely occupied the top position on the Hunter’s Gold Leaderboard with 10 hunting points.

The second and third places only had 3 hunting points each, while the fourth to ninth places only had 2 hunting points respectively.

In reality, most of the hunters had only just gotten into their various hunting modes. Under these circumstances where their Divine Telekinesis was so severely restricted, most individuals had only just encountered their first prisoner and had yet to come across their second hunting target.

The reason Lin Huang had encountered a large number of prisoners was that, for one, he had acquired Ba Lin’s memories and therefore knew of the approximate locations of nearby prisoners. For another, it was because the strength of his Divine Telekinesis was comparable to that of a Heavenly God, and his detection range was much greater than those of other True Gods.

Apart from these two factors, he also differed from other hunters in terms of cautiousness. He could not care less at all about whether or not he would be discovered by the prisoners in the secret territory. Within just an hour, the distance that he had covered was hundreds of times that of other hunters.

The name Xiu Mu also became very familiar to all the hunters in less than an hour.

“I don’t know where this fellow sprang from, but he’s really strong!”

“Let’s set aside this fellow’s abilities for the time being. If this sort of hunting efficiency isn’t because he’s cheating, then he probably has some special detection-type techniques. If I’d known earlier, I would’ve also learned a detection technique or bought a detection-type god rule relic.”

“Based on his hunting speed, all the prisoners encountered by this fellow named Xiu Mu were probably killed instantly. He’s hunted down ten prisoners of the same rank in less than an hour, so that’s an average of a little over five minutes per person, with an estimate of five minutes spent on the road…”

What this hunter did not know was that the average of five minutes-plus that Lin Huang took for each kill not only included his time on the road but also the time spent reading the minds of each corpse.

Lin Huang’s outstanding performance caught the attention of not just the hunters inside the secret territory, but also the numerous Heavenly Gods outside the secret territory.

“All the ninth-rank true god-level prisoners were killed instantly, and he didn’t even use a second flying dagger.”

“We don’t even know if he only has this one single god sequence relic-level flying dagger or if he has a full set of them. If he has a whole set, then everyone else needn’t fight anymore; he’ll have basically secured first place on the Gold Leaderboard. Everyone else can just diligently try for second place.”

“Ultimately, he’s only at true god-level. The strength of his Divine Telekinesis is limited, and so is his Divine Power. For him to use one telekinetic flying dagger with such power, I’m guessing he’s already at the far end of his limits. Even if he has a complete set, he wouldn’t be able to use every one of them with the same amount of power. His Divine Power wouldn’t be able to withstand such degree of depletion,” the Heavenly God team leader of the Combat God Temple frankly stated the problem that he had noticed.

“Moreover, there probably aren’t that many rules that he’s mastered up to Control-level. At present, it seems that the total number of rules he’s compounded at any given time is twenty-eight at most. If he’s only mastered that number of Control-level rules, then his overall abilities should be a bit lower than those at the top-tier level.” At this point, the Heavenly God team leader of God Capital spoke up from where he was standing off to one side, “Currently, we’re only at the warm-up stage. Once the others familiarize themselves with their surroundings, they’ll probably enter the Heavenly God domain to hunt for heavenly god-level powerhouse prisoners. That’s when the competition will truly begin!”

As Heavenly God team leaders who had top-tier geniuses within their own teams, they obviously did not want to see a dark horse like Lin Huang thriving all the way to the end.

Of course, they said this as well because they were genuinely not very optimistic about Lin Huang’s subsequent performance.

After all, once the several top-tier geniuses started hunting down Heavenly Gods, their points would increase by the hundreds, which would be much faster than the current one-point increases.

Even if Lin Huang continued at his current hunting speed, it would take him almost nine more hours to accumulate up to 100 points.

It was much easier to earn points by hunting down Heavenly Gods. One only needed to kill one single first-rank to directly earn 100 hunting points.

Although the initial stage of the hunt had been shocking, most of the Heavenly Gods present were not very optimistic about Lin Huang’s subsequent performance either, just like the Heavenly God team leaders of the grade-7 organizations.

Buried Heaven did not refute any of the onlookers’ discussions.

For one, there was some degree of truth to their words. For another, he really did not know what Lin Huang’s current abilities were.

After all, the Lin Huang that he knew was a sword cultivator, and in this trial, Lin Huang had not used his sword at all to avoid arousing suspicion.

Buried Heaven could not be bothered to participate in debating topics like this, but when the discussion was at its most intense, he smiled and took out a storage ring. He then retrieved all the god sequence relics he had won from the wager earlier and lined them up in front of him, carefully inspecting them one by one and completely disregarding everyone else present.

At the sight of this, the babble of spectator discussion suddenly died down.

Even the team leaders of the grade-7 organizations just smiled awkwardly and ceased their words.

However, at this moment, a Heavenly God team leader suddenly gave vent to a low mutter.

“This fellow isn’t planning on hunting down Heavenly Gods, is he?!”

Although he had said that sotto voce, his words were still clearly heard by everyone present, and they immediately looked toward the surveillance video.

Everyone soon located the main subject of discussion—Lin Huang.

At present, Lin Huang was already nearing a border between the True God domain and the Heavenly God domain.

The route he had taken was not a straight line, but one with many twists and turns instead. He had even doubled back twice to hunt some targets down, so everyone had not realized his destination at first.

Right now, however, as he got closer and closer to the border area, everyone finally realized what his actual destination was.

As Lin Huang’s travel route revealed itself, the expressions of the two Heavenly God team leaders from the Combat God Temple and God Capital instantly became acutely embarrassed.

Right after they had just predicted that Lin Huang’s abilities would probably not be good enough for him to hunt down Heavenly Gods and that his hunting points would be overtaken by someone else sooner or later, Lin Huang’s course of action had given them a direct slap in the face.

He did not even need to warm up, merely headed straight for the Heavenly God domain on the very first day of entering the secret territory.

Buried Heaven also looked up at the surveillance video. His face still bore a faint smile as he watched Lin Huang making haste the entire way, giving the impression that he had known since the beginning that Lin Huang would do this.

In reality, the expression on his face was a remnant from when he had been inspecting the god sequence relics earlier. He himself was actually quite confused as well upon seeing Lin Huang heading directly toward the Heavenly God domain.

After some time, he noticed that many of the Heavenly God team leaders were looking at him, their faces full of admiration and envy. It took Buried Heaven considerable effort to maintain control of his expression, as he forced himself to stifle his astonishment and surprise.

He still had a faint smile on his face as he looked away from the surveillance video and slowly put back into his storage space each of the god sequence relics spread out in front of him, but his mind was full of puzzlement.

‘Can this fellow still be so impressive even when he’s not using a sword?!’

The border area of the secret territory was generally very clearly delineated.

This was actually a buffer zone purposely set up by God Capital to prevent hunting trial participants from accidentally entering an area that was beyond their cultivation level.

Under normal circumstances, if hunters were to set foot in an area where prisoners were extremely scarce, they would soon realize that they might have already crossed into the border area.

Of course, following the setting up of this border area, prisoners also rapidly learned to make use of it. Some injured prisoners would hide here to nurse their wounds. In order to avoid excessive internal friction between the prisoners, God Capital tacitly condoned this type of behavior. However, after recovering from their injuries, prisoners had to leave this area.

As time went by, the border area turned into a gathering place for the disadvantaged, such as the elderly and the frail. The prisoners here were less likely to provoke hunters of their own accord.

Amongst the hunters, there was usually a tacit agreement not to spontaneously attack prisoners in the border area either.

After all, everything they did would be seen on the outside. It would be too unbecoming to target the disadvantaged.

Furthermore, the individuals who participated in the secret territory hunts were the pride of the various major organizations. They would not stoop to something as low as that, not just because of their organization’s reputation, but for their own sakes as well.

Bullying the disadvantaged was something that would make them a mockery for ages if word got out.

Of course, Lin Huang knew the unspoken rules here. From the moment he set foot into the border area, his Divine Telekinesis had sensed the presence of scattered prisoners within its probing range, but he chose to bypass them.

He was not doing so for the sake of his reputation, but simply because he felt that it was meaningless to bully the disadvantaged.

One by one, many prisoners in the border area sensed Lin Huang’s presence. Of course, they knew that individuals who passed through this area were too dangerous to provoke. All of them hid their own auras and minimized their presence to avoid being noticed by the other party.

Although the chances of the other party attacking were not high, they might encounter a hothead who would do anything to hunt and accumulate points, even hunting in the border area.

Once they sensed Lin Huang’s aura leaving the area they were in, the prisoners who were recovering from their wounds were finally able to heave a huge sigh of relief.

Following the memory information scoured from the minds of many True God prisoners, Lin Huang spent more than ten minutes passing through the border area before finally entering the Heavenly God domain of the secret territory.

Once he set foot in the Heavenly God domain, he immediately extended the probing range of his Divine Telekinesis to its maximum and scanned his surroundings, his mind quickly discerning his exact location currently based on the terrain in front of him.

‘I didn’t stray from the location I anticipated. Around two hundred kilometers ahead from here, I should encounter that bat monster.’

After ensuring that there were no issues with his coordinates, Lin Huang’s figure immediately rose into the air and sped toward his first heavenly god-level target.

The first hunting target that he had locked in on was an aberrant species prisoner with bat-like wings.

This prisoner was originally an angel. After being corrupted by Abyssal energy, its body underwent severe deformation. Its former snowy-white wings shed their feathers, turning into ugly bat wings that were covered in warts. Even its appearance changed from one that angels took pride in, turning into an ugly aberration covered in festering pustules, to the point that its skull bone structure had become deformed as well.

Even more twisted was its soul, which had almost completely been corrupted by Abyssal energy. If one were to check using Law Bending Powers of the soul probing-type, they would see that its life essence was no longer that of an angel, but an abyssal monster through and through.

Although it retained a certain degree of its original consciousness, its current consciousness was occupied by madness and hysteria most of the time.

It had even attacked angels of its own tribe more than once and infected others with the Abyssal energy within its body.

Most of the heavenly god-level prisoners in the secret prisoner territory would not attack hunters of their own volition, but there were some prisoners similar to this aberrant species who had already lost their fundamental sanity and would attack any living being close to them.

This was also why God Capital wanted to make a clear division between the Heavenly God and True God domains, to prevent trial participants from entering by mistake.

Outside the secret territory, once the numerous Heavenly Gods saw Lin Huang’s flight path, they soon knew what his hunting target was.

The expressions of more than a few Heavenly Gods turned rather peculiar.

Even Buried Heaven could not help but frown slightly.

“Senior Buried Heaven, do you want to suggest that he change to another hunting target?” The Heavenly God team leader of God Capital noticed Buried Heaven’s barely perceptible reaction and could not help asking.

For hunters who were hunting Heavenly Gods, God Capital gave every organization the authority to issue a one-time notification to trial participants via special equipment, notifying them of information or suggestions.

However, in actual fact, there were not many who used this authority.

It was usually when trial participants chose unsuitable opponents that their team leaders would suggest that they change their targets.

Buried Heaven deliberated for a moment but shook his head in the end. “It’s not necessary; he should know what he’s doing.”

He had also noticed that Lin Huang had read through the memory information of many True God prisoners, and there must have been information regarding this Heavenly God prisoner. Since Lin Huang was heading straight for the other party, this meant that he had to be quite sure of himself.

Buried Heaven’s refusal was something that everyone had not really anticipated.

This was because no matter how one looked at it, the battle was not in Lin Huang’s favor.

This aberrant species was once an angel. It was definitely proficient in rapid speed rules and sequences. Those whose path was rapid speed were extremely good at restraining psychics.

On the other hand, this aberrant species had little sanity left and could erupt into madness at any given time. It was highly likely that its abilities would show an abnormal increase, per its abnormal mental state. Therefore, it posed a far greater danger than ordinary Heavenly God prisoners.

Everyone was hotly discussing this battle that Lin Huang was about to initiate. Most of them were not optimistic about him, even though they had been repeatedly defeated by Lin Huang previously.

Right at this moment, another nosy Heavenly God jumped up.

“Since everyone’s having such a heated debate, let me start a wager. For this round, we’ll bet on whether Xiu Mu wins or loses…

“Those who want to bet on Xiu Mu winning, place the items you want to wager in the storage ring on my left hand. Those who want to bet on Bright Cosmos winning, your items go into the storage ring on my right hand…”

A new round of betting started again.

Everyone placed their wagers into the storage rings one after another, but more than 90% of them chose the right-hand storage ring. There were only two people who placed their bets on Lin Huang in the left-hand ring, and each of them only put in a beginner-stage god sequence relic.

Once everyone had more or less cast their bets, Buried Heaven glanced at the crowd of people who were looking at him and once again took out his storage ring from earlier.

This storage ring not only included the ten high-level god sequence relics he had bet on in the previous round, but all the items he had won from that round as well.

Upon seeing Buried Heaven place such a large bet, everyone could not help raising their brows.

Those who had already placed their bets instantly felt slightly uneasy.

There were several others who had not yet placed their bets; they immediately followed Buried Heaven in betting on Lin Huang. However, they did not dare to place a big bet and only threw in one or two beginner-stage god sequence relics.

The round of betting had just been closed when the monitor screen showed that Lin Huang had already entered the aberrant species’ territory…

In the void, Lin Huang was able to see his first heavenly god-level hunting target from afar.

“It’s even uglier than I expected…”

Earlier on, he had read about Bright Cosmos’ appearance in many True Gods’ memory images. However, when he actually saw Bright Cosmos in person, he could not help but lament out loud.

He did not know if this additional hideousness was because the aberrations of Bright Cosmos’ physical body had gotten worse or because of some other reason.

Lin Huang could clearly see that the exposed areas of its body were covered with mucus-filled pustules of various sizes. Its head was so swollen that it gave the impression it might explode at any moment.

From head to toe, there was not even a shadow of its original angel form.

If Lin Huang had not obtained information about Bright Cosmos from reading numerous True Gods’ memories, he would have even suspected that this aberrant species before him was an abyssal monster from birth.

Even the Holy spear in its right hand had completely turned inky-black after being contaminated by Abyssal energy, to where it had even formed some special sort of integration with its aberrant body.

To a certain degree, Bright Cosmos was no longer an angel. It had even abandoned part of its living characteristics and become a fusion of living and dead matter.

Lin Huang also noticed the abnormality of its aura but did not probe further into this aspect.

1

He had seen many Heavenly Gods but had never fought against them before.

This aberrant species before him was his first Heavenly God opponent.

Therefore, Lin Huang was very much on his guard.

This was the first time he had been so serious since entering this encaged space.

Outside the secret territory, the eyes of almost every Heavenly God there were glued to the monitor screen showing where Lin Huang was. At this moment, all the other trial participants had completely lost the attention of the Heavenly God spectators outside the arena.

In the video projection, after the two of them met, there was not even so much as an opening remark before the battle kicked off right away.

The one who attacked first was Bright Cosmos, who did not have much sanity left.

In its current state, it had already utterly lost the ability to distinguish between friend and foe. Without hesitation, it would attack any living being that encroached upon its territory, and of course, Lin Huang was no exception.

On its back, dozens of bat wings suddenly fluttered. The next instant, its figure vanished, leaving behind a swirling wind in its place, which spread out in all directions like water ripples.

“It’s fast!” Someone among the Heavenly Gods watching the battle suddenly exclaimed.

Although Bright Cosmos was only a first-rank Heavenly God, the speed it currently displayed was practically the same as that of a third-rank.

The moment Bright Cosmos displayed its astonishing speed, there were even many Heavenly Gods watching the battle who thought that Xiu Mu would be the one killed this time.

However, this did not happen.

Lin Huang had been prepared for the sudden attack by Bright Cosmos. He had anticipated that his opponent would most likely make the first move right away.

The moment Bright Cosmos moved, so did he.

He shook the cuffs of his sleeves slightly, and hundreds of lightning-like red gleams shot out at a speed that was in no way inferior to that of Bright Cosmos.

When the Heavenly Gods watching the battle in front of the monitor saw this happening, many could not help but gasp.

“Xiu Mu’s flying daggers are really that fast?! Their speed has entirely surpassed true god-level—they’re as fast Bright Cosmos’ movements!”

“Each flying dagger has been compounded with hundreds of types of control-level Rule Bending Power! He’s actually mastered these many rules at control-level?!”

“The power of his flying daggers has elevated by more than one level since the last round. Even at this level of power, the control of his telekinesis over the flying daggers is still accurate to such an extent. His Divine Telekinesis has probably reached heavenly god-level!”

Seeing Lin Huang in action, most of the Heavenly Gods were fulsome in their praises.

This was because there were truly not many Heavenly Gods who could do what Lin Huang just did.

However, there were a few Heavenly Gods who still did not look favorably upon the outcome of Lin Huang’s battle.

“At his current level of ability, he might still stand a chance against ordinary first-rank Heavenly Gods. However, that said, his current opponent is Bright Cosmos who can restrain him. At least for the present, I still don’t see any chance of him winning.”

“He’s compounded the telekinetic flying daggers with so many levels of Rule Bending Power. Every boost will have massively depleted his Divine Power. Moreover, he’s also controlling hundreds of these flying daggers at the same time, which will consume even more of his Divine Power. How much longer his Divine Power can last is an issue, not to mention whether or not an attack of this strength will be able to injure Bright Cosmos.”

On the monitor screen, Lin Huang’s hundreds of flying daggers formed a large net in the void, heading straight for Bright Cosmos to envelop it.

In the void, Bright Cosmos’ figure flickered successively, dodging all the blood-red lightning bolts and continuing to approach Lin Huang.

Hundreds of lightning-like red gleams shot out from Lin Huang’s cuffs again, forcing Bright Cosmos back a certain distance.

However, after dodging the attack from the second wave of flying daggers, Bright Cosmos spun around and headed toward Lin Huang again.

The aura around his entire being was less stable than before, evidently due to the negative emotions produced by being forced backward.

However, Lin Huang was completely unfazed. After Bright Cosmos approached again, he shook his sleeve cuffs once more, and hundreds of blood-red lightning bolts shot out.

Bright Cosmos dodged yet again, evading the incoming attack of the flying daggers.

After three successive waves of passive response, many Heavenly Gods outside the secret territory frowned.

“Is he so passive already? It looks like he’s being restrained in terms of speed.”

“Continuing like this is a very bad thing. Xiu Mu can’t keep attacking this way indefinitely. What’s more, Bright Cosmos’ negative emotions will increase as it keeps getting forced back. Sooner or later, it will forcefully charge over regardless of the attacks by the telekinetic flying daggers. Judging from the current power of Xiu Mu’s daggers, the most they can inflict on Bright Cosmos in terms of damage is a bit of bruising.”

The team leader from God Capital also could not help turning to Buried Heaven. “Senior Buried Heaven, do you want him to withdraw and choose another target?”

Buried Heaven’s gaze was fixed on the monitor screen, his expression unreadable. When he heard the question from God Capital’s team leader, he shook his head. “I believe he knows what he’s doing.”

On the monitor screen, Lin Huang had already used the same method to force Bright Cosmos to retreat more than a dozen times.

It looked as if he did not have any other way of dealing with his opponent’s attack, but strangely enough, his expression revealed not a single trace of panic. In fact, he still looked rather calm.

Watching Bright Cosmos charge over, dodge, then retreat time and time again, its fury rising after each encounter, Lin Huang remained extremely calm.

Faced with a heavenly god-level powerhouse as his opponent, from the very start, he had not intended to kill his opponent so quickly.

Even though he currently could do so if he were to go all out, he was not planning on revealing his trump cards while he was being monitored.

As a matter of fact, earlier, when he had chosen Bright Cosmos as his hunting target, his mind had instantly formulated a hunting strategy for Bright Cosmos.

Now, everything was turning out exactly the way he had anticipated…

Since Lin Huang’s opponent did not have much reason left, this meant that his opponent’s battle style would probably lean more toward instinct rather than intelligence. If that were the case, the simplest counter would be to make use of the other party’s lack of intellect to defeat it.

This was the tactic that Lin Huang was utilizing.

The aberrant species would repeatedly dodge Lin Huang’s attacks time and time again out of instinct. However, after each evasion, its fury also rose higher and higher.

Outside the secret territory, the spectators watching the monitor screen all felt that Lin Huang was walking a tightrope.

This was because sooner or later, Bright Cosmos would abandon evasion and break through Lin Huang’s defenses full force.

However, there were a few people who managed to catch an inkling of what was going on.

After being forced backward seven times by the telekinetic flying daggers, Bright Cosmos—who had very little remaining reason—finally reached a point beyond rage.

The killing intent radiating from its entire body had already reached its peak.

It pounced again—this time, it moved much faster than any of the previous times.

Lin Huang’s expression remained calm as if he were completely unfazed by his opponent’s monstrous killing intent, which was practically tangible.

The next instant, the aberrant species charged toward Lin Huang.

The Heavenly God spectators gasped in astonishment at its invincible demeanor.

Lin Huang’s expression remained calm, just like before. With another flick of his sleeve cuffs, hundreds of blood-red gleams shot out again.

However, this time, the aberrant species did not dodge at all and continued charging toward Lin Huang.

Lin Huang’s lips curled upwards imperceptibly. An instant later, tens of thousands of red lightning bolts poured forth from his cuffs at terrifying speed. Each lightning bolt was imbued with lightning sequence power; they were so fast that Bright Cosmos had no time to react at all.

In the void, the figure of the aberrant species was completely engulfed by the blood-red lightning bolts, and it let out a howl that was dismal beyond measure.

The howling lasted for less than three seconds before abruptly ceasing.

Outside the secret territory, the Heavenly Gods stared wide-eyed at the monitor screen, the entire place falling so silent one could hear a pin drop.

After a long while, someone finally turned to Buried Heaven to ask a question.

“Senior Buried Heaven, where did you find this bad*ss, who’s actually managed to condense god sequence chains at true god-level?!”

Buried Heaven remained expressionless and did not answer, merely glancing at the Heavenly God who had posed the question. However, inwardly he muttered, ‘I had absolutely no idea that this lad had already condensed god sequence chains either…’

Seeing that someone had broken the silence, everyone started discussing once more.

“Turns out this Xiu Mu fellow was intentionally provoking Bright Cosmos right from the start. He was waiting for the moment it completely abandoned evasion to deal the fatal blow!”

 “He played this hand beautifully! Given Bright Cosmos’ speed, if this attack had been carried out right off the bat, it would’ve been nowhere near as effective—in fact, a good half of it would have come to nothing. I have to say, he truly chose the most suitable moment to execute a perfect blow!”

“I suddenly feel that if I were Bright Cosmos, I might also have been ground down by Xiu Mu’s IQ. Being forced to retreat repeatedly seven times—if it were me, I wouldn’t be able to stand it either…”

As soon as this was said, many Heavenly Gods began to reflect on whether or not they themselves would have been fooled by Xiu Mu’s tactic.

The result was that most of them realized they would have fallen for it as well.

Lin Huang was unaware that his strategy had stirred up so much reflection from the Heavenly God team leaders.

After putting away both telekinetic flying daggers and Bright Cosmos’ corpse into his space storage, he began heading toward his next target while checking his gains from this battle.

In his inner world, a wave of new sequence power surged in, followed by a massive number of Rule Bending Powers along with sequence powers. The original forty-odd thousand rules instantly skyrocketed to more than fifty thousand.

In addition to this, an unusual wave of energy surged into the world will, strengthening the gravel world’s world will within Lin Huang and starting a new round of expansion of his inner world’s territory.

The strength of the Divine Fire within him also increased.

However, Lin Huang could clearly feel that he was still far from breaking through to second-rank true god-level.

‘I don’t know how many Heavenly Gods I need to hunt for my combat level to undergo another breakthrough.’

Lin Huang himself was not very sure what the specifics of his advancement process were.

However, killing Heavenly Gods made him stronger, which meant that hunting Heavenly Gods was the correct thing to do. As long as he continued hunting, his combat level would achieve a breakthrough sooner or later.

With this thought in mind, Lin Huang continued hurrying toward his second hunting target.

Outside the secret territory, the wager was over. One by one, the dealer transferred the god sequence relics into Buried Heaven’s storage ring, his expression sour.

The remaining Heavenly Gods who had lost the bet also wore unpleasant expressions.

This was especially true of the leaders of the several grade-7 organizations. They had originally thought that since the several geniuses in their organizations possessed the ability to kill Heavenly Gods, those geniuses would put up a splendid display during this prisoner hunt. Even if they only killed one or two Heavenly Gods throughout the entire trial, it would still be enough to impress everyone.

Nobody had expected that Lin Huang would manage to achieve a fatal blow on the first day itself.

Not only had he managed to occupy first place on the Hunter’s Gold Leaderboard as soon as he had joined the trial, but he had also even managed to kill a heavenly god-level prisoner less than two hours after the start of the hunt. From an unknown dark horse, he had become the main focus of the entire trial!

Lin Huang’s every move had become the focus of attention of many Heavenly Gods from the outside world. Not many of them were even paying attention to the other trial participants at all.

Inside the secret territory, although no one could see the monitor screen, the changes on the leaderboard were immediate.

Once a kill was completed, the kill points on the leaderboard would reflect that practically the next instant.

The second after Lin Huang had completed killing Bright Cosmos, his kill points on the Gold Leaderboard shot straight up to 100 points.

He had already been occupying the top spot on the Gold Leaderboard all this while. This sudden surge in points was instantly noticed by all the trial participants.

Everyone knew what a sudden increase of 100 kill points meant.

An increase in points like this only happened for a kill of a higher level.

For the kill points of this fellow named Xiu Mu to suddenly surge by 100 points, there was only one possibility—at his current true god-level, he had successfully killed a first-rank Heavenly God.

When the trial participants saw the changes in Lin Huang’s points, practically all of them were stunned.

Even the few who had originally not taken a dark horse like Lin Huang seriously at all narrowed their eyes.

“In less than two hours, he’s already killed a Heavenly God?! Who would have thought that apart from Virtuoso, another bad*ss character like that would emerge from Death Sickle!”

“Looks like I underestimated this newcomer previously. I thought that given his rate of killing ten ninth-rank True Gods in an hour, I would easily overtake him as long as I killed Heavenly Gods. I never expected that this newcomer would have the ability to kill Heavenly Gods as well!”

…

Virtuoso stared at the first name on the Gold Leaderboard for a long time, then suddenly muttered to themselves, “Sure enough, you haven’t disappointed me… Should I call you Xiu Mu then, or Xie Lin?”