Chapter 1661: Ten Percent Ability
When Lin Huang returned to the Great Heaven Palace, Bai and Teng Ran were checking out in detail the changes that had taken place within them.
Lin Huang did not rush them; he waited patiently for them to finish their examination.
After some time, Teng Ran was the first to withdraw his consciousness from within him.
When he saw Lin Huang, he could not help smiling as he said, "I truly never thought that I would be able to achieve this in my lifetime."
Nobody knew whether he was talking about elevating to Pure Spirit rank, or lord-level, or perhaps even both.
"This is still a far cry from what all of you will be able to achieve in the end," Lin Huang responded with a smile.
As they were chatting, Bai had finally withdrawn his consciousness from within him as well.
"How are you feeling?" Lin Huang asked with a smile.
"I feel… very powerful." All along, Bai never did have a boastful personality. "I'm under the illusion that I'm in control of everything."
"I'm under the same illusion too," Teng Ran said with a smile from where he was standing off to one side.
However, after speaking, Bai was now scrutinizing Lin Huang closely. He shook his head a moment later, "Unfortunately, I'm still not powerful enough. At present, I still don't have sufficient abilities to protect Master."
From where he stood on the sidelines, Teng Ran's expression was full of confusion when he heard Bai say this. "I thought Master hasn't yet elevated to become a Lord?"
Clearly, he had not sensed the abilities that Lin Huang was concealing.
"As expected, our Xiao Bai saw through me," Lin Huang teased with a smile, "Teng Teng, you should learn from Xiao Bai."
"What sort of nonsense nicknames are these?" Teng Ran covered his face with one hand.
Standing where he was to one side, Bai remained expressionless from beginning to end.
"Would you like to experience the gap between our abilities?" Lin Huang looked at the two of them with a cheeky grin.
For one, he was truly bored, and for another, he did not want these two to enter the Abyss again without being aware of their own abilities.
When he heard Lin Huang's invitation, Teng Ran's expression was full of puzzlement.
Even Bai, who had always been impervious to strong emotion and desires, displayed some interest.
He was the imperial monster who had been with Lin Huang the longest; this was not the first time Lin Huang had invited him to spar. However, it had been a long time indeed since he had last sparred with his master.
"You can both attack together. Also, under no circumstances must you hold back at all. If you don't give it everything you've got, there's a chance I might kill you right away." Lin Huang chuckled, and the Great Heaven Palace instantly transformed into a sky full of stars.
Bai and Teng Ran locked eyes for a moment, then went into action at practically the same time.
They had developed this rapport over the last few months.
A blood-red mist shrouded the area behind Bai's figure almost immediately. An instant later, countless blood-colored tentacles shot out of the blood-red mist like lightning, aiming straight at Lin Huang.
On every blood-red tentacle was a complex bright red Dao seal. Over twenty thousand Dao tattoos swirled on each bolt of lightning like hot molten iron.
There were over a million tentacles.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Teng Ran's entire body was enveloped in golden scales. Golden battle spear in his hand, the pair of wings on his back stirred suddenly, and he charged forward at a speed faster than even that of the tentacles.
On the point of the golden spear was a shining Dao seal as well, with over twenty thousand Dao tattoos swirling on it.
He was like a golden star hurtling at Lin Huang head-on.
Lin Huang's lips quirked up very faintly. He raised both hands slightly, and two blood-red arcs of lightning shot out.
One of them seemed to have a consciousness of its own, moving furiously through the sea of blood-red tentacles.
The tentacles were destroyed wherever it passed through.
The sensation was that of plastic being scorched by high heat, melting quickly and vanishing.
The other lightning arc collided directly with Teng Ran's spear.
With a loud boom, Teng Ran's body was flung backward at a speed over several times faster than before.
Bai's pupils contracted slightly because he noticed that Teng Ran's body was now headless as it hurtled backward.
Teng Ran's head had exploded in the collision with the flying dagger. His powerful life force was instantly annihilated.
Only at that moment did Bai realize that Lin Huang's ability was much more powerful than he had expected.
Bai was only distracted for a moment but immediately sensed an immense threat coming his way.
He lifted his eyes and saw the flying dagger that had crushed Teng Ran's head turning around and coming straight at him.
Bai's expression changed slightly, but his hand movements were not slow in the least.
He performed hand seals rapidly with both hands. A blood-red shield with many layers consolidated instantly.
The giant shield had twelve layers and was three meters tall. Like an iron city gate, it formed a barrier between Bai and the flying dagger.
There was a lava-like Dao seal carved on each layer of the giant shield.
Over twenty thousand bright red Dao tattoos filled almost every corner of the shield.
A second later, the blood-red lightning arc collided with the shield.
Subsequently, like the point of a needle piercing through a sheet of paper, the lightning arc easily pierced through all the layers of the giant shield. The Divine Telekinesis flying dagger did not slow down in the least. It pierced right through all twelve layers of the shield's defenses and shattered Bai's head.
The illusory scene in the Great Heaven Palace faded quickly as the headless body toppled to the ground.
In the Great Heaven Palace, Bai and Teng Ran stood where they were, faces pale, unable to speak for a long time.
Although they had only been fighting in an illusory simulated battle earlier, both of them knew that it was no different from what would happen in actual combat.
In the illusory simulation, Lin Huang had killed the two of them instantly.
In the real world, he would be able to do the same thing.
"Master, have you truly not elevated to lord-level yet?" Teng Ran asked with a gloomy expression. He felt that Lin Huang was concealing his combat strength from them.
"I definitely haven't elevated to lord-level yet." Lin Huang nodded and smiled.
"You didn't use full force earlier, did you?" Bai, on the other hand, lifted his head to look at Lin Huang. "I'd like to know how much of your actual ability you did use."
"Approximately ten percent or so," Lin Huang answered after giving this some thought.
In reality, he had only used a Sword seal compounded with thirty thousand levels of god sequence chains. This was not even one-tenth the number that his Godly Right contained. He had only used middle-rank lord-level Divine Telekinesis to power the two flying daggers.
Overall, that was far less than ten percent of his actual ability.
However, he was genuinely worried that he would crush Bai and Teng Ran's confidence.
"I'm more of a special case though," Lin Huang added, "In reality, both of you aren't considered weak at all among lower-rank Lords.
"With your current ability, apart from the Abyss, you can explore most of the regions of the great world."
Despite what Lin Huang said, Bai and Teng Ran's moods did not improve very much.
"Don't be so gloomy; it's not embarrassing to have lost to me. Come on. I'll take you both for some good food." Lin Huang put his arms around their shoulders and teleported back to the Ricky Star.
He then treated the two moody imperial monsters to a sumptuous meal.
Although Bai and Teng Ran were not in high spirits, they could not resist when they saw good food.
After the meal, they were clearly less upset now.
Lin Huang reminded them not to go to the Abyss again before sending them off.
It was already past 3 p.m. when he saw Bai and Teng Ran off.
Right as Lin Huang returned to his hotel room, he sensed a message being transmitted from Sword1.
"Lord Swordmaster, Yang Ling is asking to see you."
As messages from the communicators were unable to be sent to Lin Huang from the inside of Lin Huang's God Territory, Yang Ling had no option but to go to Sword 1 and get him to send a telepathic voice transmission message.
Lin Huang was aware of this as well. After receiving Sword1's voice transmission, in a flash, he returned to the God Territory within his body straight away.
Chapter 1662: Black Mountain's Background
When Lin Huang returned to the God Territory within him and saw Yang Ling again, he could obviously tell that Yang Ling's mental state had undergone significant improvement.
It was not clear if this was because Spy's death had eliminated the pressure or if it was because Yang Ling had now reunited with Hong Zhuang.
Lin Huang did not enquire further into this. He merely smiled and commented, "You look much better now."
Yang Ling had a cheeky grin on his face. "Exercising is beneficial for your mind. I've been exercising more."
"Err… I can tell," Lin Huang was rather speechless.
As expected, this fellow had once more resumed his lecherous nature…
Sensing Hong Zhuang glancing in his direction from not too far off, Yang Ling hurriedly contained his grin. He took out all six storage rings and passed them to Lin Huang.
"They've been unlocked. There's lots of good stuff inside."
"Is there anything that you'd like?" Lin Huang asked with a smile after taking the rings.
"No." Yang Ling shook his head, "But there are a few things that I'd like to talk to you about."
"Go ahead." Lin Huang nodded at once.
"Haven't you put together an organization in the great world? I think you can start an internal trading platform so the members can enjoy some preferential treatment."
"I can do that. Actually, we also did that in the gravel world previously, and it was quite a success," Lin Huang agreed to this suggestion immediately. "If you're willing, you can lead this project. If you need help from other people at any point, just let Sword1 know upfront.
"On my side, I'll take some time to sort things out and put in the resources I don't need."
For Lin Huang in his current state, any treasures below Dao Weapon grade were completely useless to him. Moreover, within the loot he had obtained previously, there were many god sequence relics and sequence items which he had disposed of directly at the black market. It would actually be better to let his own people benefit instead.
"Also, I checked the previous communication logs in these rings. Some of this information ought to be useful to you," Yang Ling continued.
Lin Huang nodded and did not interrupt, implying that Yang Ling should carry on.
"Firstly, Black Mountain, Spy, and that lady called Babble have powerful connections in the Raiders. Black Mountain has the backing of an ultimate-rank Lord in the universe. This Raider's codename is Lonely Peak. This Lonely Peak is reportedly only half a step away from the level above Lord, and his abilities are fairly terrifying."
"Is he close to Black Mountain?" Lin Huang asked this because some superiors did not even know the names of their subordinates.
"Based on the information records that I managed to find, these two have an extremely complicated relationship. Both of them became brothers after transmigration. Black Mountain was the elder brother, around five years older than Lonely Peak. It seems Black Mountain transmigrated here earlier than Lonely Peak did. However, Lonely Peak's Goldfinger is more powerful, and he's also more talented. After transmigration, his ability soon surpassed that of Black Mountain.
"When Lonely Peak's brilliant talents came into prominence, he soon received an invitation from the Raiders to join their organization. It was Lonely Peak who recommended Black Mountain for membership later on."
"In other words, the relationship between these two is practically no different from that of actual biological brothers." Lin Huang frowned when he heard this. "If that's the case, then as soon as the news of Black Mountain's death gets out, Lonely Peak will very likely come to the great world to hunt me down…"
"The situation won't become as dire as you think." Yang Ling shook his head.
"I only found out that there are countless great worlds in the universe after reading Black Mountain and the others' communication logs. These great worlds are divided into regions and are managed by organizations in the universe. The great world we're currently in falls under Royal's jurisdiction.
"Since the highest level of local combat strength in this great world is only lower-rank lord-level, to avoid upsetting equilibrium, other organizations are only allowed to send middle-rank Lords as guardians if they want to settle here. Not only that, guardians can't be middle-rank Lords who are too powerful.
"If something goes wrong with the branch organization that's settled here, their headquarters will need to apply to Royal for authority to investigate. Not only that, they will have to conduct the investigation under Royal's surveillance.
"If something happens to a lower-rank Lord, the highest possible combat strength allowed for the investigator is middle-rank lord-level only. If something happens to a middle-rank Lord, then the highest possible combat strength allowed for the investigator is upper-rank lord-level only.
"This is expressly stipulated in the universe's oath of alliance. This rule alone puts paid to the possibility of Lonely Peak coming here in person."
When Lin Huang heard this, he was finally able to be a bit more at ease.
He was very much aware of his current abilities. If he worked harder, he should be able to go head-to-head in a direct confrontation with an upper-rank Lord. However, if he wanted to fight on equal footing with an ultimate-rank Lord, he would not be able to do this—at least not in the immediate future.
"However, the Raiders won't send only one upper-rank Lord to investigate this time," Yang Ling elaborated again, "Now let's talk about Spy and Babble's backgrounds."
"Babble's background is still much simpler. She has a lover in the universe, and this lover's codename in the Raiders is Rose."
"A female?" Lin Huang raised his brows.
"That's right, she's an absolute beauty. However, she's also an upper-rank Lord with overwhelming abilities. She's successfully consolidated a level-1000 Dao seal already and is only one step away from achieving ultimate-rank lord-level.
"Rose has many lovers both male and female; she has at least a thousand lovers, including flings. However, she doted on Babble, who was definitely on her top five list of lovers. Reportedly, this is because Babble had the divine ability to enter one's dreams. Nobody can replace that."
"So she might come to the great world to avenge Babble?" Lin Huang asked.
"It's possible, but the chances of her arriving here in her Primordial form aren't high. After all, her ability is too close to that of an ultimate-rank Lord. The chances of obtaining an investigator's ID and passing Royal's assessment are extremely low.
"I think there's a higher chance of her sending a lover here to investigate the matter for her. However, I've no idea which one she'd send."
"How about Spy's background?" Lin Huang asked immediately.
"Spy's background is much more complicated…" Yang Ling paused and only continued after organizing his thoughts.
"First of all, he's a member of the Electronic Tribe, a mechanical species. This tribe possesses powerhouses above lord-level. In the universe, they've conquered practically the entire information industry, occupying an almost seventy percent share of the market.
"Naturally, Spy isn't anyone important in the Electronic Tribe. However, he's still a middle-rank Lord who has now died. The chances of the Electronic Tribe coming to investigate are quite high.
"However, we have no way of ascertaining to what extent the Electronic Tribe will pursue this matter.
"Compared with his identity as a member of the Electronic Tribe, though, what's even more problematic is that Spy was Lonely Peak's treasury designer and gatekeeper. He has the key to the treasury."
"So he's no less important to Lonely Peak than Black Mountain is?" Lin Huang was even more puzzled when he heard this. "Then why did Lonely Peak send two such essential people to our great world?"
"Because Lonely Peak was preparing to achieve a breakthrough in secret. On the surface, he wanted the two of them to believe that they were going to the great world to plunder loot. In reality, he was worried that if the breakthrough failed, he would die and bring disaster down upon Black Mountain. He also probably did not want the collections that he had spent years amassing to wind up in someone else's possession," Yang Ling put forward his conjecture.
"So that's why this time it wasn't just me—you were Lonely Peak's target too!" Lin Huang finally realized why Yang Ling was discussing the matter with him so seriously.
Yang Ling nodded, unsure whether to laugh or cry, "I have the key to his treasury now…"
Chapter 1663: A Little Trick
"Lonely Peak's treasury… Can it be accessed with just the key? Or does the key have to be used at specific coordinates to open it?" Lin Huang gave a malicious smile.
"The space isn't anchored to a set point; anyone can open it as long as they have the key," Yang Ling explained, a touch resignedly. "Right now the key is bound to Spy's Goldfinger.
"Apart from necessary items, Lonely Peak seems to have put almost all of his collections in there. I have a feeling he might not be very confident about achieving a successful breakthrough. That's why he left a back door for himself. As soon as the breakthrough failed, he would reincarnate immediately, then have Black Mountain and Spy locate his reincarnation. By doing this, his reincarnated self would be able to directly inherit everything he left behind once he obtained the key. He also wouldn't need to expend a great deal of effort to specify a particular set of coordinates."
"Which means to say we can directly access his treasury right now?" Lin Huang's eyes lit up.
"We could, but…" Yang Ling was clearly concerned.
"No buts, just open it right away."
"Listen to me first." Yang Ling still felt he needed to explain exactly where the problem lay.
"First of all, Lonely Peak very likely has some sort of setup on the treasury or the key. At the very least, if the treasury is accessed, he'd definitely sense it. Otherwise, if Spy stole something, he wouldn't even know. He won't have let his guard down entirely with Spy.
"Secondly, there's almost certainly a safeguard mechanism in the treasury. We have absolutely no idea what kind of traps Lonely Peak might have left in there. However, given his personality, whatever methods he used ought to be able to kill an upper-rank Lord easily."
Lin Huang nodded slightly to express his agreement.
"The first problem you mentioned—Lonely Peak sensing someone opening the treasury—isn't a problem at all. We've already killed Black Mountain, and we've obtained Lonely Peak's treasury key. That's already a grudge. Whether or not he knows we've accessed his treasury won't affect his determination to kill us."
In the face of Lin Huang's rebuttal, Yang Ling was rendered somewhat speechless.
Since Lonely Peak already had a grudge against the two of them, one more thing would not affect matters in the least. Stealing one of his treasures would certainly not make any difference.
"As for the traps he left in the treasury, that's certainly a problem, but it's not something that can't be solved…" An idea suddenly popped into Lin Huang's mind.
"You can use a clone to try instead of going in yourself, but it's not entirely safe either." Yang Ling saw that Lin Huang had stopped speaking and guessed that he might have been intending to use a clone. "Lonely Peak is sure to have thought of every possible situation, so he probably won't have overlooked this. Whatever he set up might be able to kill one's Primordial form directly through its clone.
"I think the wisest thing to do is to leave this great world temporarily and avoid the arrival of the Raiders' investigators," Yang Ling paused and put forward his suggestion anyway.
Even though he knew Lin Huang possessed sufficient ability to kill Black Mountain and Spy, Yang Ling still felt he would not stand a chance if he were to face down the Raider's investigators.
"Don't get so worried first. If, as you say, the universe's oath of alliance has sufficient restrictions to prevent ultimate-rank Lords from coming here, then I have ways to deal with things."
"What ways? Are you going to get the Club's upper-rank Lords to help?" Yang Ling persisted
Seeing that Lin Huang did not reply, he continued.
"I kept rejecting the Club's invitation back in the day because I knew there were spies in their midst. Furthermore, there are a considerable number of them.
"Don't put too much trust in any assistance from the Club. If you really do ask them to help, we have no way at all of confirming whether the assistants we get are Raider spies or not."
"I have another plan that has nothing to do with the Club." Lin Huang was very much aware that Yang Ling had a great deal of psychological trauma regarding the Raiders. Even though Spy was now dead, the crippling fear he felt for the Raiders had not receded by very much.
Seeing that Lin Huang was still unwilling to disclose his plan, Yang Ling did not pursue the matter any further.
After all, with his current ability, he could not participate in lord-level battles at all.
"If I'm absolutely certain my plan won't work, I'll consider your suggestion and leave this great world." Lin Huang patted Yang Ling's shoulder.
After their conversation ended, Lin Huang returned to the Ricky Star again.
He sat down on the sofa in the hotel living room and took out the six storage rings that belonged to Black Mountain and the others. He then checked through each of them.
It did not take him long to make a list of the items he could upload onto Royal's auction platform.
The first thing he noticed in the storage rings were dead bodies.
This was because what he needed most now was the Kingdoms in the bodies of Lords.
However, most of these bodies were carcasses of heavenly god-level monsters. There were only ten or so Lords, and only two of them had not had their God Territories removed.
Lin Huang immediately put away the two Lords' bodies in his storage ring.
Apart from corpses, there were a total of forty-eight Dao Weapons. Of these forty-eight, thirty-seven were low-grade Dao Weapons, and only eleven of them were intermediate-grade Dao Weapons. There was not a single expert-grade Dao Weapon.
Although Lin Huang was slightly disappointed, he had expected this.
Dao Weapons were different from god sequence relics. They were the same in that the higher the grade, the more powerful they were. However, the more Dao tattoos there were, the greater the consumption of Odylic Force to activate the Dao Weapon. With Black Mountain and the rest's ability, since they had only consolidated twenty to thirty Dao seals, intermediate-grade Dao Weapons were fully sufficient for their use and were the most convenient weapons to utilize. Not only would more powerful expert-grade Dao Weapons accelerate Odylic Force consumption significantly, but their power would also not experience a significant boost.
Within the storage rings were also hundreds of bottles of elixirs with different effects. They were exclusively used by lord-level powerhouses.
There were some elixirs that could temporarily boost one's God's soul's strength and some that could increase the ferocity of one's Odylic Force…
There were also some precious mineral stones and medicinal materials. Lin Huang even noticed quite a few elevation materials for his imperial monsters.
Apart from these, the rest were miscellaneous items.
Among these miscellaneous items, Lin Huang even discovered several runes.
These runes had temporary Dao seals sealed within them. When they were activated, one could temporarily utilize the Dao seal's power.
Lin Huang considered for a moment, then uploaded all thirty-seven low-grade Dao Weapons on the auction page. The trading condition he set was, "Only accepting lower-rank Lords' God Territories, including God Territories of Abyssal tribes, the Bug Tribe or any other tribes.
The auction was set for a duration of 24 hours.
Based on what Yang Ling had said, the Raiders would have to expend some time going through the necessary processes required by Royal so they could send their investigators here. However, if the process was swift, it could be completed in one or two days. He could not afford any delays.
After setting up the list on Royal's auction page, Lin Huang did not waste any more time.
He passed through the gate to the virtual realm and entered the virtual realm cabin once more.
This time, his main objective for entering the virtual realm was not to refine the God Territories he had retrieved from the two Lords' bodies earlier.
After sitting down in the middle of the virtual realm cabin with his legs crossed, he took out the Nirvana Trees one by one from the God Territory within him.
This was the loot he had obtained from the Abyss with Virtuoso and the others.
The Nirvana Trees were derived from the death spring. Once they were refined, they would be able to appropriate massive amounts of cultivation resources from the death spring.
Previously, Nine Gloom had used the Nirvana Trees as filters to appropriate the energy of the death spring.
However, that was not Lin Huang's purpose this time in bringing out the Nirvana Trees. Instead, he planned to refine these trees into his clone by using the secret skill he learned from Nine Gloom.
If he were killed, the clone could be used as a death substitute.
This was the little trick he had only just thought of using for exploring Lonely Peak's treasures.
Chapter 1664: The Death Spring
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
"What is this place?! Wasn't I refining the Nirvana Trees earlier?"
Lin Huang stood naked on a blood-red beach, confusion filling his face as he looked at the golden sea not far away.
He tried to spread his Divine Telekinesis but discovered there was no response at all even though it was peak upper-rank lord-level. It was as if something had completely sealed off his Divine Telekinesis.
It was not just his Divine Telekinesis—even the Divine Power in his body could not be used at all, much less his god rules, god sequence chains, and his Sword seal.
Lin Huang tried to communicate with his Goldfingers like Xiao Hei and the Soul-controlling Tablet within his body, but they displayed no response either.
At this point, Lin Huang was really somewhat panicked.
It was his first time encountering something like this since his transmigration to the gravel world.
It was as if he had completely turned back into an ordinary person.
"What's happening?! Is this an illusion…?"
After taking a moment to calm down, Lin Huang looked around. No matter what had transpired, there had to be some clues in his surroundings. At the very least, he needed to find out where he was.
Not far away on the blood-red beach were massive trees, their branches swaying in the wind.
"Are those… Nirvana Trees?!"
As soon as Lin Huang saw the Nirvana Trees, he vaguely recalled something and immediately turned his head to look at the golden sea.
Only upon looking this time did he realize that it was not a golden sea at all.
It was an enormous river formed by countless particles that were enveloped in golden light. It stretched as far as the eye could see and seemed to have no end. From afar, it looked like a massive sea.
A small number of golden particles were stirred by the surging waves and the strong winds. They drifted toward the Nirvana Trees, and were caught by the trees' branches, turning into nutrients…
Lin Huang had a vague sense that the aura coming from the golden particles was familiar. Only upon a closer look did he discover that the particles were tiny fragments of Origin Energy…
Unlike the Origin Energy spheres in the virtual realm that were still whole, the golden particles here seemed to be crushed fragments of Origin Energy.
Lin Huang harbored a faint suspicion that the reason these Origin Energies were in particle form was most probably from continuously colliding with each other as they swirled along in this powerful current.
"Nirvana Trees… a massive golden river…" Lin Huang stared at the "sea" and muttered quietly, "Is this the death spring?!"
The minute he uttered the words "death spring", the entire world suddenly began quaking.
Countless massive waves seemed to roil and churn in the death spring.
A feeling of helplessness arose in Lin Huang's heart—the sort felt by mankind in the face of nature's power. At the same time, his consciousness blacked out suddenly, and his naked figure gradually faded.
The next second after Lin Huang's figure faded, a golden eye formed in the air above the golden river, staring at the direction where Lin Huang had disappeared.
An ancient divine tone resonated above the death spring.
If one could understand what it said, it would translate to, "What a strange little brat, descending upon my Kingdom in the form of a true spirit. (curious)"
After the divine tone faded, the golden eye looked at the stretch of Nirvana Trees not far away. A few ancient syllables could be heard after it stared at the forest.
This translated to, "Interesting. (happy emotion)"
As soon as the syllables were heard, endless golden waves emitted golden points of light, as if a golden mist had covered the entire forest…
Obviously, Lin Huang did not know what had happened after he left. When he regained consciousness, he realized he had returned to the virtual realm cabin.
"Did that happen because I'm refining the Nirvana Trees? I actually saw the legendary death spring…" In truth, Lin Huang still could not really understand exactly what had happened.
"The death spring's persona is certainly above lord-level. My power was actually sealed in the face of an entity like that; I couldn't even contact my Goldfingers…" Lin Huang still felt a trace of fear when he thought about it.
He sank his consciousness within his body again and very quickly sensed the existence of his Goldfingers.
Divine Power, Divine Telekinesis, Dao seal, god sequence chains, God Rule Powers… all of them were back.
"Xiao Hei, did all of you sense an anomaly earlier?" Lin Huang could not help asking.
Lin Huang was rather surprised at Xiao Hei's response.
"Didn't the rest of you sense it either?" Lin Huang asked the other Goldfingers—the Soul-controlling Tablet, Yin Yin, and the rest.
"We didn't sense anything unusual," the Soul-controlling Tablet and Yin Yin replied, their tones filled with confusion.
The rest of the Goldfingers' simple responses were the same.
"Didn't all of you sense that we were disconnected for a while earlier? Or that you were temporarily sealed off by some force?" Lin Huang pursued.
"Not at all," Xiao Hei responded without hesitation.
"Haven't you been sitting here this whole time refining those Nirvana Trees?" Yin Yin asked Lin Huang.
"In any case, nothing unusual happened at all in my sensory perception," the Soul-controlling Tablet said with absolute certainty.
The rest of the Goldfingers gave the same answer as well.
"So the Goldfingers didn't sense any anomalies when that entity sealed the Goldfingers in my body?!" Lin Huang frowned slightly. The Goldfingers' answers caused him to feel that the death spring was even more terrifying now.
He did not think that he had encountered an illusion earlier. If it were truly an illusion, the Goldfingers would instantly sense an anomaly in his God's soul fluctuations.
Therefore, the only logical explanation was that the death spring used some specific method to block his Goldfingers' senses.
Lin Huang did not dare dwell any further on a matter like this, which kept getting more frightening the more he thought about it.
After calming himself down a little, he set these distracting thoughts aside and checked the refinement state of the Nirvana Trees within him.
The minute he checked, he was immediately somewhat startled.
The Nirvana Trees in his inner world seemed to have been galvanized by some force and had unexpectedly broken through to lord-level. Not only that, their auras were still increasing significantly.
As he watched the Nirvana Trees growing into giant trees comparable in size to stars, their branches swaying like massive living beings gliding in the galaxy, Lin Huang was so stunned his mouth was left hanging open for a long time.
He only came back to his senses after a long while and discovered that the two hundred over Nirvana Trees only slowed down their combat strength elevation speed finally once they had reached upper-rank lord-level. Only when they had achieved peak upper-rank lord-level did they completely halt their combat strength elevation.
Impressively enough, the Nirvana Trees' God's soul strength had now reached the same level as Lin Huang's God's soul.
Lin Huang connected his God's soul to the Nirvana Trees, and a massive volume of information surged into his head like waves… The feeling was exactly the same as when he was refining the Origin Energy from the virtual realm and had obtained its inheritances.
He closed his eyes, rapidly digesting and sorting all of it out.
The volume of information was truly enormous, at least several hundred times more in total than the information he had obtained previously when refining the Apocalypse Dragon Python's memory. However, it was also very disorganized and jumbled up.
It was as if there were countless memory fragments belonging to different people. However, each fragment had a different length. Some were short, some were long, but all of them were complete segments of memory.
It took Lin Huang fully half a day before he finally managed to sort out all the memories.
Unlike the inherited memories he had previously obtained from the virtual realm that had no memory images of the material realm, the memories Lin Huang obtained this time had a massive number of images from the material realm.
He saw countless scenes from various great worlds, as well as the beauty of untold galaxies. Of these memory fragments, the weakest was only true god-level, while the most powerful was peak ultimate-rank lord-level.
He even saw numerous tragic scenes of some ultimate-rank Lords' attempts to break through to the next level…
When his consciousness returned to his body, he silently recorded these inheritances down in detail, whether they were strong or weak.. He felt that these legacies needed to be inherited by a successor.
Chapter 1665. Consolidating A Sword Seal!
After sorting out the inheritances, Lin Huang looked through them one by one.
Very quickly, he discovered that within all these inheritances were at least several hundred Sword Dao Inheritances.
Some of them were merely a single sword skill, while some might only be a little bit of cultivation knowledge. Naturally, there were also a small number of complete Sword Dao Inheritance.
Although these Origin memories had been crushed into particles, each inheritance had not lost its information. They were complete; the only difference lay in the quantity of information they harbored.
What surprised and delighted Lin Huang even more was that more than half of these hundreds of Sword Dao Inheritances were lord-level inheritances.
He checked them carefully one by one, from the weakest level to the strongest.
After digesting a mere two hundred or so Sword Dao Inheritances below lord-level, he already felt that they had truly opened his eyes.
Subsequently, Lin Huang did not hesitate at all and began to digest the lord-level inheritances.
Out of three hundred or more lord-level Sword Dao Inheritances, only three of them were fully complete.
Of these three complete inheritances, two were lower-rank lord-level, while the third was upper-rank lord-level.
Most of the remaining inheritances only contained one sword skill.
However, as far as Lin Huang was concerned, that was good enough.
Lord-level sword skills were all activated by a Sword seal. Perhaps non-sword cultivators could only see the utilization of the surface-most sword skills. However, a sword cultivator like Lin Huang could see more than that.
He could easily tell from the other party's sword skills how many Sword Dao sequences their Sword seal had consolidated. It was also not difficult for him to determine the effects of each Sword Dao god sequence chain, as well as how to use them, and how to combine them with other Sword Dao sequences…
In the virtual realm cabin, there was neither day nor night nor any seasons.
Lin Huang studied these Sword Dao Inheritances, heedless of time. He also corroborated everything that he had learned.
After goodness knows how long, an ethereal emptiness abruptly filled his mind.
All of a sudden, his comprehension of Sword Dao seemed to have broken through its initial ceiling to reach new heights.
All the Sword Dao Inheritances and sword skills that he had ever obtained and or learned had now reached a new level of understanding.
Lin Huang paid no attention to what had happened and seized the opportunity to madly absorb the nutrients of all the inheritances.
All the different inheritances and sword skills were automatically stripped out and separated into the most basic Sword Dao elements. They were then rearranged, inferring countless new sword skills and inheritances.
Within his body, the Sword Dao god rules and Sword Dao sequences were now furiously being built up, as if an accelerator had been pushed to speed time up.
It was unclear how much time had passed before he finally came out of cultivation mode.
Only then did he realize that his Sword Dao had achieved a breakthrough.
He had advanced from the initial complete-stage Sword Dao heavenly rule to Heavenly Dao.
Not only that, a brand new Sword seal had been consolidated within him.
Lin Huang was stunned when he saw the Sword seal. He immediately checked his body and discovered to his surprise that he had not elevated to lord-level.
Theoretically, a Sword seal was also a type of Dao seal.
Most sword cultivators would elevate to become Lords right away through the consolidation of a Sword seal.
The peculiar thing was that Lin Huang's combat strength remained at tenth-rank heavenly god-level. No breakthrough had happened in that area.
He was not sure if it was because he did not go through the process of unification, or for some other reason.
However, Lin Huang actually felt relieved.
The truth was, he had not planned on achieving a breakthrough to lord-level at the moment.
The reason was that he knew that he was still very far from reaching the limits of a Heavenly God.
If he broke through to lord-level right away at this point, it would be the equivalent of undermining his potential.
A Dao seal consolidated from nine god sequence chains and a Dao seal consolidated from ninety god sequence chains were utterly different levels of ability and future potential.
Lin Huang could clearly sense he was far from reaching the maximum number of god sequence chains his Godly Right could contain.
If he wanted to achieve a breakthrough, he had to achieve that limit!
This was the condition he set for himself.
However, Lin Huang was still satisfied with the new Sword seal that had been consolidated.
Not only did this give him a sense of achievement from his Sword Dao breakthrough, but it also gave him a boost in ability.
"An additional Sword seal means that the god sequence chains I can invoke outside my body will be doubled!" Lin Huang's eyes lit up.
Due to the limit on the number of god sequence chains his Godly Right could contain at the moment, right now there were less than forty-one hundred thousand chains. Naturally, in the past, he could also only invoke less than forty-one hundred thousand god sequence chains through his Sword seal.
However, he had two Sword seals now.
This meant that the number of god sequence chains he could use outside of his God Territory had effectively doubled.
This was the boost effect of the Dao seal on the Godly Right.
However, this sort of boost would be restricted by the total number of god sequence chains in the God Territory.
Theoretically, the maximum number of god sequence chains that Lin Huang could use at present with his two Sword seals was eight hundred and nineteen thousand two hundred chains.
However, even with his newly obtained Sword Dao god sequence chains, the number of god sequence chains in his body at the moment was less than eight hundred thousand.
For Lin Huang, this was not a problem at all.
As long as he refined a sufficient number of God Territories, the total number of god sequence chains in his God Territory would definitely exceed the limit of the Dao seal boosts.
The newly consolidated Sword seal's boost effect on the Godly Right had, without a doubt, tremendously strengthened Lin Huang's abilities.
"This is a real surprise." Lin Huang had actually never expected to be able to consolidate a Sword seal.
His main purpose for entering the virtual realm cabin this time was to refine the Nirvana Trees so he could set up a death substitute method for himself. He had never expected to receive consecutive surprises.
After calming himself down, Lin Huang finally began inspecting the connection between his God's soul and the Nirvana Trees.
However, before he had the chance to check on the status of his death substitute setup, he noticed that the two hundred or more Nirvana Trees were still absorbing massive amounts of information resources from the death spring, even though they had stopped elevating in combat strength.
It felt as if someone were forcibly flooding the Nirvana Trees with all this information.
Fortunately, each of the Nirvana Tree's combat strength was at peak upper-rank lord-level now. Their God's souls could sufficiently hold this vast quantity of information resources, so they could still contain it all without anything overflowing into Lin Huang.
When others obtained Nirvana Trees, their main intention was to use the Trees like a water pump to draw the death spring's information resources into their heads.
However, on Lin Huang's end, the two hundred or so Nirvana Trees were more like a giant dam and reservoir, preventing information resources from flooding Lin Huang.
This made Lin Huang suspect that something might be wrong with the way his God's soul connected to the Nirvana Trees.
He had read Nine Gloom's memories previously, and the situation Nine Gloom had encountered was completely different from what Lin Huang was experiencing. Every time Nine Gloom drew an inheritance from the death spring, it would take several years at least. Some inheritances with more information could take up to dozens, even hundreds of years. Throughout this process, spiritual energy had to be channeled to the Nirvana Trees every day to maintain the trees' consumption.
Despite this, the problem was that very often, the information resources the Nirvana Trees drew were not even heavenly god-level, which was not exactly useful to Nine Gloom.
Since Lin Huang knew what Nine Gloom had encountered in the process, he had not considered the Nirvana Trees' ability to draw information resources from the death spring an effective technique. Therefore, he had chosen to use the Nirvana Trees as the object for his death substitute.
However, the situation he was encountering now was completely different from what Nine Gloom had experienced.
This made him take the Nirvana Trees' ability to plunder information resources more seriously.
As far as he was concerned, whether something went wrong with the way his God's soul connected to the Nirvana Trees or not, at the very least, the end result was still positive for the time being.
Chapter 1666. Going Into Closed-Door Cultivation Again
Since Lin Huang had no idea whether the anomaly in the Nirvana Trees' connection to the death spring would be temporary or permanent, he did not dare let the opportunity slip by just like that. He immediately focused his entire being and received the massive volume of information resources furiously.
He was afraid that if he bypassed this round of benefits and the connection channel returned to the state that Nine Gloom had encountered, that would be a bitter pill to swallow.
However, Lin Huang did not look over all this information in detail this time.
Not only did he not look through it in detail, but he only preserved lord-level information resources. Any information resources below lord-level, he stored in memory crystals.
To prevent redundant information in his mind, he completely sealed all of the information resources lower than lord-level after they had been transferred to the memory crystals.
Days passed in the virtual realm cabin.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Lin Huang had accumulated tens of thousands of lord-level inheritances in his mind. The Nirvana Trees' retrieval of information resources from the death spring still showed no signs of drying up at all. Not only that, the absorption speed did not slow down in the least.
Only now was he basically able to confirm that the unusual connection between the Nirvana Trees within him and the death spring was most probably not a temporary one. Although he had no way of being sure whether it was permanent or not, he felt that it would not stop in the immediate future.
He did indeed feel that the information resources he had retrieved were more than sufficient.
More importantly, the thousands of memory crystals in his storage rings were all full.
Lin Huang put aside the information transfer from the Nirvana Trees for now. He did not bring out the bodies of the two Lords in his storage ring to refine their Kingdoms. Instead, he got up right away and left the virtual realm cabin.
As soon as he returned to the Ricky Star, he contacted Bloody through telepathic voice transmission.
He transferred all of the inheritances to Bloody through telepathic voice transmission, including the lord-level inheritances.
As the load of information was massive, even with telepathic voice transmission, Lin Huang spent a full day and a half to complete transferring all the information resources.
After delegating the task of sorting out the information to Bloody, he returned to the God Territory within him in a flash.
He gave the entire batch of memory crystals to Yang Ling so he could digitize the information and sort it out for storage.
After seeing to the matter of the memory crystals, Lin Huang returned to the Ricky Star again.
Now he finally had the time to take out his Royal Token to check on the auction status of the Dao Weapons.
The final bid for the thirty-seven low-grade Dao Weapons surprised Lin Huang once more.
"One hundred and one lower-rank Lords' Kingdoms?!" Based on his initial expectations, it would be incredible if he could trade the thirty-seven low-grade Dao Weapons with thirty lower-rank Lords' Kingdoms. That would be an astonishing number already.
He had never expected that he would be able to get one hundred and one of them.
He clicked into the trading details to check and soon saw the description of the traded items.
"As expected… All hundred and one of them are Abyssal Lords' Kingdoms…" In reality, Lin Huang had already speculated this might be the case when he saw the unusually high number of items traded. However, he had not expected that all hundred and one Lords' Kingdoms would be Abyssal. None were from other tribes.
Lin Huang had always known that the God Territory Shell Remnants of Abyssal half-step Lords were not valuable, but it had never occurred to him that the Kingdom Shell Remnants of Abyssal Lords were equally worthless as well.
What he did not know was that for many people, cleansing God Territories was an exceptionally troublesome task.
He had within him the Eternity Fire, which could easily devour all of the Abyssal energy in the Abyssal God Territories.
However, for most other people, the cost of cleansing Abyssal God Territories was extremely high.
First of all, only powerhouses who were middle-rank lord-level or above could cleanse a lower-rank Abyssal Lord's Kingdom.
Moreover, an ordinary lower-rank Abyssal Lord's Kingdom would take a middle-rank Lord hundreds of years at least to fully cleanse it. If the Kingdom's size was slightly larger, or if it possessed more living beings, the time required for cleansing would be even longer.
Unless they were in dire straits of poverty, no Lords would waste their time cleansing Abyssal God Territories.
Therefore, such a thing would usually be sold at a cheap price.
Furthermore, Dao Weapons were hard currency in the universe.
Divine Crystals were hardly used for trading between Lords. Bartering was basically the common practice now, and Dao Weapons were practically the equivalent of currency.
Conversely, Abyssal Lords' Kingdom Shell Remnants and Abyssal Lord bodies were items that were harder to sell.
The Lords from Royal were more than willing to trade Abyssal Kingdoms for hard currency like Dao Weapons as long as the price was not too outrageous.
This had made Lin Huang the biggest beneficiary in the exchange.
After transferring all hundred and one Abyssal Lords' Kingdom Shell Remnants from his identity token to his storage rage, Lin Huang returned to the virtual realm cabin again.
The investigators from the Raider would be coming soon; he did not have much time to waste. Therefore, the minute Lin Huang obtained these Kingdom Shell Remnants, he wanted to convert the Kingdom Shell Remnants into abilities as soon as possible after obtaining them.
He picked up the storage ring in the virtual realm cabin and took out the two Lord's bodies. He retrieved their Kingdoms and began to refine them.
At the same time, the Eternity Fire began to cleanse the one hundred and one other Kingdoms.
When the refinement of the two Kingdoms was complete, the Eternity Fire had cleansed all of the Kingdom Shell Remnants.
The vast quantity of Abyssal energy was a rare delicacy for the Eternity Fire. This round of Abyssal energy consumption had advanced it another level; it was even more powerful now.
As for Lin Huang, he did not stop refining the Kingdom Shell Remnants at all.
Days passed. He worked day and night refining Kingdom Shell Remnants without taking even a second or a minute of rest.
As he was refining the thirteenth Kingdom, he finally sensed that the Godly Right within him had now come to satiety.
The number of god sequence chains his Godly Right could contain had reached its upper limit—one million god sequence chains!
At present, the number of god sequence chains in the God Territory within his body had skyrocketed to one million eight hundred and sixty thousand chains.
Although his Godly Right was now at its upper limit, Lin Huang did not stop refining Kingdom Shell Remnants.
Without hesitation, he chose to continue refining them.
The number of god sequence chains in his God Territory kept increasing, just like previously.
After an indeterminate length of time, he finally managed to fully refine all the remaining eighty-eight Kingdom Shell Remnants.
The number of god sequence chains his Godly Right could contain was still one million but the total number of god sequence chains in his God Territory had increased to seven million one hundred and sixteen thousand chains—an increase of more than several times over.
Lin Huang did not come out of closed-door cultivation even after his ability had increased significantly.
Instead, he sat with his legs crossed and his eyes closed and began inferring god sequence chains again.
One must know that the god sequence chains he currently possessed were borrowed from the God Territory in his body. He had not truly mastered them.
Excluding the Sword Dao heavenly rules that he had comprehended from consolidating the Sword seal earlier, in reality, he had mastered very few god sequence chains.
However, inferring god sequence chains was easier than comprehending god rules himself and then elevating them into god sequence chains. After all, he had used those god sequence chains before and possessed an in-depth understanding of the sequence power within them.
Lin Huang crushed an Epiphany Card and rapidly immersed himself, heart and soul, into inferring god sequence chains…
The god rules in his body swiftly began to consolidate and assemble into god sequence chains… The speed at which the god sequence chains consolidated exceeded what everyone else generally understood about god sequence chains.
Chapter 1667: That's More Like It!
Lin Huang completely lost track of time in the virtual realm cabin.
He had no idea whether a hundred years had passed—maybe a thousand years, even ten thousand years… perhaps even longer.
The god sequence chains in his body consolidated one by one from nothingness. Only at the end when they reached one million god sequence chains did Lin Huang finally open his eyes.
The number of god sequence chains had skyrocketed to one million, which was the maximum number his Godly Right could contain.
He instinctively sensed that the number of god sequence chains he could consolidate had reached its limit as well.
He even tried to consolidate the one million and first god sequence chain, but it failed at the very last second of its consolidation. He only gave up trying after three consecutive failures.
"So if I want to elevate my abilities any further, the only thing I can do is consolidate a Dao seal, I suppose…" Lin Huang considered for a moment. He seemed to have reached the true limits of heavenly god-level at present; he could not go any further.
In order to advance his abilities even more, his only option was to consolidate a Dao seal and become a Lord.
'Do I want to consolidate the Dao seal now?' Lin Huang thought about it and felt that he did not really have much reason to continue procrastinating.
However, he soon ran into a problem that troubled him.
'All raptors are Voids. If I consolidate the Dao seal in the material realm, the process should be similar to Buried Heaven's. The biggest difference will probably be the strength of the raptor.
'But what if I consolidate the Dao seal in the virtual realm with my virtual body? Will I attract more raptors?'
Lin Huang was considering whether or not he wanted to seize this opportunity to bait and lure large numbers of Voids over to kill them.
'It doesn't matter even if this virtual body dies anyway. My virtual body has three lives every day…'
Lin Huang hesitated no longer at this point.
He got up right away and stepped out of the virtual realm cabin, returning it to card form.
Although he was not very sure if the virtual realm cabin could be destroyed, he did not wish to experiment and find out.
Watching the still, dead black and white world before him, Lin Huang calmed his state of mind slightly. The aura of his entire being began to rise.
This time, he did not suppress his strength at all.
He released the full power of the god sequence chains one by one.
His body began to detach from the neutron star and its terrifying force of gravity, gradually floating into the starry heavens.
In this boundless black and white universe, he was as tiny as a particle of dust.
However, his aura had shrouded all the stars around him completely.
If there had been other living beings present in the surrounding star zones, even an ordinary person with no cultivation base would have been able to clearly sense the Holy Power of a god spreading through the entire galaxy.
Lin Huang closed his eyes, his body completely relaxed.
On his body, god sequence chains of various colors surged out from within him like endless tentacles. These god sequence chains were no longer invisible to the eyes of ordinary folk—they had materialized into actual chains.
If onlookers were to witness this scene, they would certainly be shocked by the number of god sequence chains surging out of Lin Huang's body at present.
There were a million god sequence chains. This terrifying number was beyond all common logic.
One must know that when Buried Heaven had elevated to become a Lord previously, he possessed only twenty-seven god sequence chains. Furthermore, he was already the top powerhouse among Heavenly Gods in the great world.
Even Great Heaven, who had subdued the great world for an entire era, had only mastered forty-two god sequence chains at the time of his unification.
This was no longer a simple disparity in numbers; it was one of magnitude.
The more god sequence chains a Heavenly God mastered, the more powerful his Dao seal would be after unification.
The reason was that the number of god sequence chains would be equivalent to the number of Dao tattoos.
This was common knowledge among all Heavenly Gods.
Furthermore, the number of Dao tattoos on the Dao seal consolidated during each Lord's first unification would determine the number of Dao tattoos on all subsequent Dao seals.
The Dao seal consolidated during unification would determine a Lord's foundation.
Two Lords who started with a different number of Dao tattoos would have a bigger gap between their respective abilities in the future as they consolidated more and more Dao seals.
Naturally, the greater the number of Dao tattoos, the greater the difficulty in consolidating the Dao seal. It would also take much longer.
Therefore, Lords with fewer Dao tattoos were not entirely at a disadvantage. They would be able to elevate much faster.
However, for Lin Huang, elevation speed was not a problem at all.
His cultivation speed had never been slow. Now that he had the Gate of All Realms, which enabled him to enter and exit the virtual realm whenever he wished, he did not have to worry about the amount of time he spent on cultivation at all.
He had enough resources to do what others could not do.
If this were someone else, even if they had sufficient talent and potential to consolidate millions of god sequence chains at heavenly god-level, they could not afford to expend that amount of time to do so.
Possibly by the time they had consolidated millions of god sequence chains, their opponent would have long since elevated to become a Lord—maybe even a middle-rank or upper-rank Lord.
Moreover, hardly any cultivators of the same level had God Territories as powerful as Lin Huang's, which could contain so many god sequence chains.
Lin Huang's time resources, his constitution, as well as his God's soul, God Territory, and his talent and potential…
No ordinary individual could compare in practically every single one of those aspects.
All these factors combined were what gave him such terrifying abilities.
In the void, after the god sequence chains had extended themselves out of Lin Huang's body, they rapidly began weaving around menacingly, as if each of them had a consciousness of their own.
Not long later, the god sequence chains started to detach from Lin Huang's body one by one, beginning to dance riotously above his head. They even unleashed all sorts of sequence powers and began to fight.
It seemed as if none of them wanted to submit to each other, and all were trying to gain the upper hand.
Lin Huang, however, did not panic at all. He had known about this already from watching Buried Heaven's unification previously. This was the first stage of unification—psychic communication.
Moreover, when he obtained the Lords' inheritances from the death spring earlier, he had looked through some information regarding unification as well. He was now very experienced in how to handle each stage of unification.
During the psychic communication stage, the god sequence chains would gain a measure of intelligence. Therefore, they would battle amongst each other, all vying for supremacy.
This stage was also called the chaotic sequence period and was a very dangerous state.
If one's God's soul were not powerful enough to subdue the god sequence chains, the unification would instantly fail.
It was even possible that one's God's soul might be crushed by the berserk god sequence chains, and the individual would die on the spot.
As far as Lin Huang was concerned, solving the issues involved in this stage of the process could not be easier.
As soon as his peak lord-level God's soul was unleashed, myriads of Divine Telekinesis threads shot out, tightly binding the strange creatures that the god sequence chains had become and forcing them to blow up!
The entire process ended in less than three seconds and was extremely violent.
Lin Huang watched as the creature manifestations of the one million god sequence chains blew up one by one to reveal the original forms of the god sequence chains. They retreated back into his body, crestfallen, and Lin Huang nodded, displaying a satisfied grin.
"That's more like it."
Chapter 1668: Unification
The first stage of unification—psychic communication—went by easily, just like that.
Inclusive of the time the god sequence chains took to manifest as creatures, the entire process only lasted less than half a minute.
After the god sequence chains withdrew into the God Territory within Lin Huang's body, they consolidated into lines of Dao tattoos in the heavens above his God Territory.
Once the millions of Dao tattoos were fully consolidated, they began releasing an endless frenzy of Divine Power.
At the same time, Lin Huang's God Territory finally manifested on its own around him. The size of his God Territory was like a boundless universe that had descended into the virtual realm.
Lin Huang himself did not know at present exactly how many star zones it covered.
However, he could clearly sense that many Voids were contained within his God Territory.
Fortunately, he did not sense the existence of anything threatening.
After all, he was in the great world right now, not the universe.
At present, the great world did not even have a publicly visible middle-rank Lord. Fewer still had died and become Voids. Even back in the ancient era, when resources in the great world were ample, not many upper-rank Lords would stay in the great world, so very few of them had died in the great world and become Voids.
This was also the main reason why Lin Huang dared to try unification in the virtual realm.
However, he was by no means certain if the unification would attract powerful entities from the universe.
Lin Huang ignored the Voids contained within his God Territory.
He focused his entire attention back on the process of unification.
This was the second stage of unification—unification.
Simply put, this was the transformation of god sequence chains into Dao tattoos, which would then consolidate into a Dao seal.
This stage was also the one with the highest failure rate in the process of a Heavenly God's unification. Over eighty percent of individuals had their unifications fail at this point.
This was because the process of god sequence chains consolidating into a Dao seal would release terrifying energy, somewhat similar to a nuclear fusion reaction. It was a triple test for the physical body, God's soul, and God Territory of the individual performing the unification.
The energy released from the god sequence chains consolidating into a Dao seal would impact the individual's God Territory first. At the same time, some of the energy would leak out and impact the individual's physical body and God's soul.
The unification would instantly fail if either the individual's God Territory, physical body, or God's soul failed to sustain the impact.
Therefore, for most cultivators in general, this was a very dangerous stage.
However, Lin Huang was different.
Even as early as imperial-level, his God Territory had been different from that of everyone else. Back then, he could already refine and integrate others' God Territories.
As for later on, despite being newly elevated to heavenly god-level, he could integrate many God Territory Shell Remnants of half-step Heavenly Gods. He could even refine the God Territories of lower-rank Lords right away.
For ordinary cultivators, there were limits on the number of God Territories each individual's God Territory could refine and integrate. Not only that, there were severe restrictions on refinement strength. They could not increase their strength limitlessly like Lin Huang could.
Great Heaven, who was powerful enough to subdue an entire era, had mastered forty-two god sequence chains. However, from first-rank heavenly god-level to ninth-rank heavenly god-level, he only dared to refine nine Heavenly Gods' God Territory Shell Remnants.
That was already the limit his God Territory could take.
Lin Huang, on the other hand, did not merely have a powerful God Territory. The strength of his God's soul was peak upper-rank lord-level now. Although his physical body was slightly less powerful, he was still on par with a peak middle-rank Lord.
In the void, the millions of Dao tattoos rapidly consolidated into a golden Dao seal.
The Dao seal was like an intensely burning star suspended above the God Territory, releasing endless energy in all directions.
The piercingly bright golden light spread to practically every corner of the God Territory. Any place it passed through was immediately reduced to scorched earth.
Without hesitation, Lin Huang immediately invoked more god sequence chains from within his God Territory to envelope the Dao seal in layers.
One must know that only a million god sequence chains were required to consolidate this Dao seal. However, there were over seven million god sequence chains in Lin Huang's God Territory. Excluding the one million god sequence chains used to consolidate the Dao seal, there were still over six million of them remaining.
Under Lin Huang's control, these six million and more god sequence chains swiftly enveloped the Dao seal like a giant cocoon.
Although the divine rays released from the Dao seal were powerful, they could not break through a barrier several times more powerful than themselves.
The divine rays released from the giant god sequence chain cocoon were now less than ten percent of what had previously been released.
This level of energy was no longer sufficient to cause any shakeups in Lin Huang's massive, boundless God Territory.
As time passed by, the golden rays released from consolidating the Dao seal soon faded entirely. The one million god sequence chains had fully consolidated into a golden Dao seal.
From beginning to end, Lin Huang's God Territory did not experience even a tremor. The unification stage had passed.
He did not even sense any of the three challenges other Lords faced in the unification stage.
Most of the energy released from consolidating the Dao seal had been absorbed by the giant cocoon formed from the six million and more god sequence chains. It did not shake Lin Huang's God Territory in the slightest, much less bleed through into his God Territory and impact his God's soul and physical body.
The second stage of unification was now complete—in fact, far more smoothly than Lin Huang had anticipated.
In reality, he had been a little worried that his physical body might not be strong enough and had wondered if it would be crushed by the energy impact resulting from consolidating the Dao seal.
However, from the looks of it, this was an entirely extraneous worry.
The second stage of unification had now finished, and the Dao seal had been formed.
The next would be the third and last stage of unification—Dao plundering!
Once the Dao seal had been formally consolidated, it would attract covetous raptors. A raptor would then come to the material realm and attempt to snatch away the Dao seal.
Only through defeating the raptor, protecting the Dao seal, and letting it absorb the raptor's Origin Energy would the Dao seal truly be successfully consolidated.
However, this stage was the most difficult in the entire process of unification.
This was because raptors were attracted by the Dao seal's aura, and their abilities would usually be on par with the individual performing unification.
The problem was that raptors were all lord-level powerhouses. They were far more familiar with using a Dao seal than the individual performing unification.
Furthermore, both raptor and individual would be in different states of mind. The individual would mostly desire to protect the Dao seal—a more passive state of mind. The raptor, however, would be in a predatory state of mind, which was more active.
Raptors would definitely have the upper hand in terms of combat experience and state of mind.
Naturally, the individual performing the unification was not entirely at a disadvantage. At least they had the advantage of home ground, as the battlefield would be within the individual's God Territory.
Despite this, throughout the ages, individuals performing unification would lose to raptors in battle more often than not.
If the second stage of unification was extremely dangerous, then the third stage—Dao plundering—was akin to burning one's bridges.
If one managed this stage successfully, they would be reborn and become a Lord! If they could not navigate this stage, they would fail, and all their efforts would be for naught.
Lin Huang was no stranger to Dao plundering.
Several months back, he had witnessed Buried Heaven's Dao plundering and had fought a raptor more than once after that. Many raptors (Voids) had died at his hands as well.
However, Lin Huang could not help but feel rather anxious at this moment.
This was because, from what he knew, everyone performed unification in the material realm.
He had absolutely no idea what kind of raptors he would attract now that he was performing unification in the virtual realm.
Chapter 1669: A Being Above Lord-Level
In the virtual realm, Lin Huang's God Territory spread far and wide, enveloping an untold number of star zones.
The shining golden Dao seal hung like a large golden sun above the God Territory. It radiated countless golden beams into the far reaches of the starry heavens, and its overwhelming aura spread in all directions like a wave.
To the Voids' senses, the aura released by a Dao seal in the material realm was like an incomparable delicacy that made them drool.
In the virtual realm, the first to sense Lin Huang's Dao seal aura were the Voids contained within his God Territory.
They were like sharks that had scented blood, rushing in a frenzy to Lin Huang's location.
Since this was happening in his God Territory, he could clearly sense the Voids' movements.
Lin Huang did not panic at all. Instead, he felt rather excited.
The reason was that he clearly sensed over ninety percent of these hundreds of Void auras were lower-rank Lords. The small number of remaining Voids were middle-rank Lords. Not only that, they were only at the level of an ordinary middle-rank Lord.
For Lin Huang, no matter how many there were, they were insufficient to be any kind of threat to him.
Practically the next second after the Dao seal had formed, the first Void appeared in front of Lin Huang.
It was a humanoid monster wielding blades. It was of a burly build, and its body was clad in a full suit of armor. It had a white mask over its face. Each of its six arms wielded a weapon—a saber, a spear, a sword, a polearm, a hook sword, and a shield. Five weapons and one piece of defensive equipment could be considered a fairly comprehensive array.
"A White-faced King Kong…" Lin Huang recognized the monster at first glance.
The White-faced King Kong that had become a Void targeted Lin Huang and took a step forward. Right as it was about to attack, a blood-red gleam flashed through the air, swift as lightning, and instantly pierced right between its brows.
The White-faced King Kong's burly body froze. A second later, its body disintegrated at once and turned into a cloud of mist, seeping into the shining golden Dao seal.
After being infused with this Origin Energy, Lin Huang's Dao seal seemed a little brighter, although this was barely perceptible to the eye.
The White-faced King Kong had only just been killed when the second and third Voids landed at almost the same time.
One was obviously a pure blood dragonkin. Its whole body was covered in golden dragon armor, and its size was so massive it could compare with a star.
The other one was a curly-haired baboon. Although it was much smaller than the dragon beast, it was still as big as a mountain and was tens of thousands of meters tall.
Once the two Voids landed, they targeted each other instead. As if they were rivals, they utterly ignored Lin Huang's existence.
If this had happened under normal circumstances, Lin Huang would have been more than happy to watch them fight. After seeing the two monsters tear each other apart, he would simply gather the spoils.
However, he was in the process of unification right now. The longer things dragged on, the more unforeseen circumstances might happen.
Therefore, he did not wait for the two monsters to fight. He attacked at once, bringing an end to what might have been a very interesting battle.
Two blood-red electric arcs easily took the two Voids' lives.
After the two Voids were killed, they also turned into two cloud-like spheres of Origin Energy which were then absorbed by Lin Huang's Dao seal.
Lin Huang could not help raising his brows as he watched the Dao seal absorbing three Lords' Origin Energies one after the other.
"I'd like to see how much you can take."
As soon as Lin Huang spoke, a third wave of monsters landed. This time it was another two monsters as well…
He attacked and killed them both right away without hesitation, letting his Dao seal continue to absorb their Origin Energies.
Right after that, Voids began arriving continuously one wave after another.
Lin Huang easily killed all of them.
Within less than three minutes, he had killed hundreds of Voids.
His Dao seal was like an infinitely alluring bait, attracting a frenzy of Voids one after the other.
When the Dao seal had absorbed the Origin Energies of one hundred Voids, it was finally satiated and began to retract its aura.
Lin Huang felt slightly relieved only after he saw this.
On a certain level, only now could he be considered to have officially succeeded in unification.
However, within the range of his God Territory, he could still sense that there were Voids rapidly heading for his location.
As the Dao seal retracted its aura, the God Territory spread out around Lin Huang swiftly began to collapse.
This was not because it was damaged but because it was ending its manifestation.
A gleam flashed through Lin Huang's eyes when he saw the Voids that were still heading toward him in a frenzy.
Dozens of blood-red electric arcs shot out from his sleeves at lightning speed, furiously attacking the monsters that were heading his way.
He had initially thought to use the Dao seal as bait to lure many Voids over. Once he had killed them, he would obtain large quantities of Origin Energy.
He had never expected that the Origin Energy of the Voids he killed would basically be completely absorbed by his Dao seal. This resulted in him not gaining any extra benefits at all.
Seeing that his God Territory was collapsing, he did not want to let this hunting opportunity pass. He attacked without hesitation.
At the very least, he managed to kill twenty-eight Voids before his God Territory collapsed completely. He then used Divine Telekinesis threads to collect the twenty-eight Origin Energy spheres.
However, a second before the God Territory that Lin Huang manifested collapsed completely, a black Dimensional Whirlpool suddenly appeared above the Dao seal, swiftly beginning to form.
Lin Huang fixed his eyes on the Dimensional Whirlpool. Before it could even consolidate fully, an extremely terrifying aura was transmitted through from the other side.
Lin Huang's danger instincts began sounding an alarm. Goosebumps ran down his spine, and his back was drenched in cold sweat. It felt as if there were a terrifying being staring at him from the side of the whirlpool. He instinctively sensed that the power of this entity was far beyond anything he could imagine. Before it, he was just an insignificant ant.
'A being that's above lord-level…' The thought suddenly popped into Lin Huang's mind.
It was as if someone had cast an immobilizing spell on him; he could not move his body at all. He could only watch the Dimensional Whirlpool swiftly forming in front of him.
The only thing he could do was to hope that the God Territory he had manifested would collapse even more swiftly. He wanted it to collapse totally before the whirlpool had fully formed so the space anchor points would be erased.
Only if that happened would he have a chance of survival.
Lin Huang felt as if ten million years had passed right at that moment.
However, a golden ray of light suddenly cut through the air from some unknown direction and beamed into Lin Huang's collapsing God Territory. Not only that, it landed with extreme accuracy right on the black Dimensional Whirlpool.
The still-forming Dimensional Whirlpool instantly exploded. At the same time, a furious shriek came from its other side.
The shriek even passed through the Dimensional Whirlpool right away and surged toward Lin Huang's God Territory.
Everywhere it passed was instantly crushed into nothingness.
Its subjugation speed far exceeded the speed of light.
Watching as the sound wave surged toward him, Lin Huang could imagine himself being pulverized into a bloody splatter.
At that moment, a thunderous sound overwhelmed the destructive mystic sound!
"Get lost!"
The mystic sound stopped abruptly…
Chapter 1670: Lin Huang, Now Elevated To Lord-Level
"What happened?"
Lin Huang stared in a daze at the peaceful black and white sky in front of him. He could not really understand what on earth had just happened.
Just an instant before his God Territory collapsed, there seemed to be a being above lord-level that had sensed his Dao seal and tried to cross over to snatch it away.
Right as this other party was about to get their hands on the Dao seal, another unknown entity had attacked and instantly destroyed the Dimensional Whirlpool.
The being above lord-level had used a mere mystic sound to penetrate through space and had almost killed Lin Huang's virtual body.
The unknown entity had spoken then and obliterated the mystic sound.
After the danger had been resolved, Lin Huang's God Territory collapsed completely soon after, and the unknown entity had not revealed themselves either.
He did not know whether it was because the space anchor points had been erased when his God Territory collapsed so they could not lock onto his coordinates, or because they did not wish to meet him.
Looking at the still, calm sky spread out before him, Lin Huang even had a moment of doubt, wondering whether everything that had just happened was merely a figment of his imagination.
"That voice… Why do I feel like I've heard it before?"
That "Get lost!" was uttered in a clear, cold female voice. Lin Huang had a vague sense that it was somewhat familiar, but he was not able to connect it with any of the girls that he remembered.
'Perhaps I'm over-thinking this.' Lin Huang shook his head with a wry smile. He felt it was not very likely to be a girl he knew.
The reason for this was that his cultivation speed had been very swift all along, far outstripping all of his friends. It was highly unlikely that there would be a girl whose cultivation speed was faster than his, who could cultivate into a being above lord-level within a short few years.
Lin Huang felt that even if it were another traveler with a Goldfinger, it was also highly unlikely that her cultivation speed would outstrip him by so much.
After setting aside these jumbled thoughts, Lin Huang released his Divine Telekinesis and scanned his surroundings but did not find anything. He had a feeling that the girl who had saved him was probably nowhere nearby. However, he cupped his hands in a respectful fist-palm salute toward the sky and bowed. "Thank you, Senior, for saving me! If there's anything you require from me at all, I'll try my best to fulfill it for you."
Lin Huang purposely waited for a few seconds after saying this. However, he did not receive a response.
He had expected this, but one should show proper respect to one's seniors after all, especially since this individual had intervened and saved his life twice.
After retracting his Divine Telekinesis, Lin Huang checked on the state of things within his body and nodded in satisfaction. Only then did he summon the Gate of All Realms and return to the material realm.
As soon as he returned to the material realm, he began looking over the state of his body in detail.
The first thing he noticed was an inexplicable surge in the number of god sequence chains within his God Territory.
Before, there had only been a total of 7.16 million god sequence chains in his God Territory. However, there were now 14.71 million—more than double the previous amount.
Lin Huang thought back on this carefully and realized that it was a result of his Dao seal devouring a massive amount of Origin Energy in the last step of unification, the Dao plundering.
Furthermore, his successful consolidation of a Dao seal during the unification process seemed to have caused his Godly Right to undergo a transformation as well.
Now Lin Huang could borrow not only the god sequence chains from his God Territory but also the Dao seals that he had refined from those Lords.
An example would be the Dao seals that he had absorbed and refined from the Origin Energy of the Voids he killed this round. There were over eight hundred seals.
Although all of them did not have the same number of Dao tattoos, when added up together, their Dao tattoo power was comparable to the compounding of over one point two million levels of god sequence chains.
Together with the level-3 Dao seal within Lin Huang's body, this Dao tattoo power that could inherently fuel three million god sequence chains was the equivalent of compounding four point two million or more levels of Dao tattoo power.
"It looks like I need to consolidate more Dao seals…" Lin Huang knew that the most direct way to elevate his ability would be to consolidate Dao seals.
The total number of god sequence chains in his body had already come to over fourteen million chains. Furthermore, including the Dao seal power that he could borrow, he could only invoke four point two million god sequence chains, which was less than one-third of the total amount.
To use more Dao tattoo power, it was necessary to consolidate even more Dao seals.
Apart from the changes in his Godly Right authorization and his god sequence chains, the massive volume of Divine Power in Lin Huang's body had transformed entirely into Odyl.
Odyl was considered the high-level form of Divine Power that could perfectly integrate Dao seals and Dao tattoo power.
With this surging spread of Odyl, Lin Huang's physical body and God's soul were strengthened even further.
Currently, the strength of his physical body was now at the level of an upper-rank Lord. His God's soul—initially peak upper-rank lord-level—had achieved a further breakthrough and was now at ultimate-rank lord-level strength.
His overall abilities had undoubtedly received a transformative boost.
However, Lin Huang was not the only one who had gotten stronger. The God Weapons within him had also leveled up, following the elevation of his combat strength.
They had broken through from low-grade Dao Weapons directly to supreme-grade Dao Weapons.
This was, without a doubt, another round of external enhancement.
Lin Huang even felt that his current ability ought to be sufficient for him to go head-to-head in battle with some newly elevated ultimate-rank Lords.
An ultimate-rank Lord would have consolidated thousands of Dao seals at the very least. However, even if one were to use Buried Heaven as a benchmark, a level-1 Dao seal could only invoke the Dao tattoo power of one thousand eight hundred or so god sequence chains. A level-1000 Dao seal could only invoke the Dao tattoo power of less than two million god sequence chains.
At present, Lin Huang only dared to go up against a newly-elevated ultimate-rank Lord. An ultimate-rank Lord with more powerful abilities would have consolidated at least three thousand Dao seals and above. Lin Huang's abilities were not yet sufficient to fight back.
However, Lin Huang was in no hurry. He knew that as the number of Dao seals in his body increased, he would only become more and more powerful.
It was incredibly difficult for the ultimate-rank Lords in the universe to further elevate their abilities.
'At my current level of ability, I should be able to handle the investigators that the Raiders send.' The threat present in Lin Huang's mind abated slightly after he checked his body thoroughly.
According to the information Yang Ling had provided, Royal would not allow ultimate-rank Lords to enter the great world, which was their territory. Therefore, the most powerful investigators that the Raiders could send would only be upper-rank Lords.
For Lin Huang at present, upper-rank Lords no longer posed any kind of threat to him.
However, he did not plan to just wait passively for the investigators to arrive.
Although the investigators were no longer a threat to him, he had no intention of ending his cultivation just yet.
After mulling over the possibility that his coordinates in the virtual realm might have been exposed, for safety purposes, Lin Huang opened the Gate of All Realms and directly teleported himself to an uninhabited planet in the human world.
This place was millions of star zones away from the Ricky Star in the God Territory.
After arriving at this new location, Lin Huang summoned up the virtual realm cabin again.
He took out his storage ring and put it in the cabin.
After that, he opened the Gate of All Realms and stepped into the virtual realm again.
Upon entering the virtual realm, Lin Huang spread his Divine Telekinesis and noticed three lower-rank lord-level Voids within the perimeter of the dozens of star zones nearby.
After using his God Weapon flying daggers to dispose of the Voids without hesitation, Lin Huang was finally able to be at ease and enter the virtual realm cabin. He picked up the storage ring from the floor, then sat down with his legs crossed.