The desert planet Agyha had been thoroughly investigated by the Genius Society a few years ago, but they ultimately found nothing and had no choice but to leave in disappointment.
However, the IPC later developed the planet almost as a form of waste recycling, turning it into the adventure, treasure-hunting, and entertainment hub it was today.
At the same time, the planet's vast wilderness and deserts formed enormous uninhabited regions. Some of the oases in these areas became lawless zones and dumping grounds for stolen goods from the surrounding star systems, where all kinds of shady characters could be found.
Of course, these places existed with the company's tacit approval. The IPC firmly held the planetary rights to Agyha, and those dumping grounds had to provide protection fees every year.
In any case, according to the IPC's rules, even its wanted criminals would not be subject to large-scale capture as long as they crossed the outer checkpoints and fled into these legally tolerated gray-market zones.
The IPC's slogan—"Even enemies can receive our services, so long as they are willing to follow the interstellar trade rules established by the company"—was not an empty promise. After all, incidents of robbing the company's cargo ships and fleeing to company territory to sell the stolen goods were commonplace throughout the universe.
In short, on the desert planet Agyha, as long as you stayed near the major cities under IPC control, you were a tourist. As long as you did not deliberately court death, your safety was guaranteed.
However, the moment you left the city limits without taking part in an IPC tourism program, the IPC no longer guaranteed your safety. Everything would be decided by strength.
Against this backdrop, Dan Lei landed on the planet as a tourist.
Dan Lei's journey to the planet went smoothly.
After obtaining his trial pass, all the subsequent procedures with the Luofu went without a hitch.
Dan Lei temporarily affiliated his shop with the Ming Huo Merchant Guild for a hundred years, leaving them to operate it on his behalf.
The Ming Huo Merchant Guild was Tingyun's merchant guild, and it had some renown on the Luofu.
Many people in Golden People Alley were its business partners, so no one found it strange that Dan Lei chose to affiliate his shop with the Ming Huo Merchant Guild.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, Dan Lei also met Tingyun before she was ravaged by Phantylia and signed a hundred-year affiliation contract.
However, the contract clearly stipulated one condition: if the Ming Huo Merchant Guild could no longer operate during the contract period, all ownership of the shop would immediately return to Dan Lei instead of being transferred as part of the guild's remaining assets.
Here, Dan Lei was openly setting a trap for Tingyun. After the disaster caused by Phantylia, Tingyun would be declared dead, and the Ming Huo Merchant Guild would eventually be handed over to Yan Ming's trade group. At that point, Dan Lei could justifiably take back the shop.
Of course, Dan Lei had considered whether he should help Tingyun avert this disaster.
But after thinking it over carefully, he realized that he had no idea when or where Tingyun would be attacked by Phantylia.
Moreover, even if he persuaded Tingyun not to leave the Luofu around Star Calendar 8100, Phantylia could disguise herself as someone else and infiltrate the Luofu. That would not solve the problem at all.
He would also lose his advantage of foresight by then. Since he would not know who Phantylia was, the attempt would cost him more than it gained.
Therefore, regarding Tingyun's future fate, Dan Lei chose to say nothing and simply watch everything unfold.
After all, Dan Lei was very interested in the Jianmu Fruit as well.
Once the shop matter was settled, he had to register his identity.
The IPC had actually been racking its brains to gain access to the Luofu market. After the Third Antimatter Legion War, the Luofu had been assigned the duty of traveling through star regions where numerous civilizations flourished and conducting trade and cultural exchanges with various worlds.
Therefore, gaining access to the Luofu market was equivalent to gaining access to the entire Xianzhou Alliance market.
Thus, the IPC completed Dan Lei's identity registration in a single day. It even exchanged the Xun Di in his possession at the highest exchange rate while trying to trick him into opening an online shop on the Interastral Peace network.
However, Dan Lei spent all those Credits on purchasing supplies for life in the desert.
After learning that Dan Lei was going to Agyha, Tingyun gave him plenty of advice and even helped him plan how to buy the various supplies more economically.
Such thoughtful service made Dan Lei feel embarrassed, considering that he had, to some extent, set a trap for Tingyun.
Therefore, Dan Lei purchased all his subsequent supplies from the Ming Huo Merchant Guild. He even traveled to Agyha aboard one of the guild's merchant ships, transferring to another vessel only after reaching the Pier Point star system.
Since Dan Lei had taken entirely legitimate routes, he encountered no danger on the journey from the Luofu to Agyha.
Only Dan Lei, who had not seen much of the outside world, still felt deeply shaken when he saw the array of interstellar constructs.
Actually, it was hard to blame Dan Lei for his lack of experience. During his nearly two hundred years on the Luofu, if its data could be quantified, its exploration progress probably would not have even reached twenty percent. Dan Lei had not even taken a starskiff to view the vastness of the Luofu from space.
Still, after seeing enough interstellar space stations, one naturally grew accustomed to them. After all, an interstellar transfer station was still just a transfer station, no matter how large it was built.
By the time they completed the series of jumps to Agyha, Dan Lei was already perfectly calm.
After the spaceship entered Agyha's atmosphere, all that could be seen from above was endless wilderness, scattered patches of green, and enormous sandstorms.
He had to admit that watching a sandstorm from high above was rather interesting.
Yellow-brown walls of cloud devoured the horizon with jagged edges, resembling a pot of boiling metallic liquid churning across the earth.
Sunlight refracted through the curtain of dust in a bizarre coppery hue, making the entire sky appear to have been sealed inside murky amber.
The outlines of the dunes twisted into liquid waves under the gale. Occasionally, lightning erupted deep within the clouds of dust, like sparks bursting between the scales of a Great Beast in a fit of rage.
Everywhere they passed, the scattered oases were swallowed whole by the yellow "Great Beast," like tiny building blocks.
At that moment, the spaceship's automated voice was also introducing Agyha's sandstorms to the tourists. It began recommending Agyha's natural sandstorm observation program and promised that the protective fields around the cities could withstand the sandstorms completely, ensuring that they would not affect the cities.
As for Dan Lei, he was not concerned about sandstorms or anything of the sort. He was currently studying some of the large creatures inhabiting Agyha's deserts.
Honestly, when Dan Lei obtained Agyha's bestiary, his first reaction was that this place was probably a parallel universe from one of the Monster Hunter games. Aside from the winged wyverns and elder dragons, nearly every other monster could be found here.
According to the information provided by the IPC, before the company discovered and developed Agyha, there were very few native humans on the planet, and they held no prominent position in its ecosystem. It was, in every sense, a planet of Great Beasts.
There were enormous frog-like creatures that inhabited underground rivers and wind-eroded caves.
There were giant bears that roamed the oases and the barren lands around them.
There were countless fish-like sandfish in the dunes, all kinds of sandworms, and large monsters called Sand Sea Dragons that had nothing to do with dragons. Even massive creatures resembling Horned Dragons, but without wings, had been confirmed to exist.
It could be said that these creatures were Dan Lei's secondary objective, after charging the Holy Grail.
Their intact hides and bones were materials for crafting magic puppets. Even damaged remains could be directly drained of their vitality and transformed into Magic Crystals, while most of their flesh was edible.
Most importantly, once he went a little farther from the cities, he would not encounter anyone at all. As a planet for charging the Holy Grail, it was practically perfect.
Aventurine was not a member of the Longevity Species, and there was no information indicating that he had gained immortality after obtaining the Aventurine Stone.
The timing of the Agyha Aventurine Case could only be estimated based on the lifespan of a short-lived species.
After Aventurine gained his position, his lifespan had surely been extended to some degree. Therefore, the current estimate was that the Agyha Aventurine Case had occurred more than thirty years before the Penacony storyline, meaning that it was only a few years from the present.
In addition, the Monster Hunter elements were merely background details added to flesh out a planet about which there was no information at all. The author had no plans to write an actual hunting sequence.
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