Challenger Plan

Chapter 20: Challenger Plan

[Player Count: 90]

Number of Primal Characteristics Contained: 9

Player's Daily Sacrificial Power Output: 552 points

Average Player Monster Level: 5

Possessed Domain Node: Emperor's Tomb Village (The land where Di Zhao's last wisp of origin was buried, possessing territorial rules and characteristics for reshaping flesh and blood.)

After reviewing his daily earnings, the Primal Altar beneath Qi Sheng's feet glowed.

Following a brief spatial distortion, he appeared in his bedroom in the real world.

Glancing at the calendar on the wall, he opened the window, switched to Di Zhao's form, and flew into the vast night.

A long time later, Qi Sheng appeared before a desolate graveyard.

It had been neglected for years, with many tombstones overgrown with vines. Nearby, a city subway station was under construction.

Qi Sheng's footsteps stopped before a tombstone.

The photograph on this tombstone was blurred, and the inscriptions were faded.

Gazing at the tombstone, Qi Sheng's expression was complex. He finally knelt before it and kowtowed heavily.

After remaining in that position for a long time, he stood up and began to repair the tombstone, memories flooding his mind.

As a child, he always dreamed of possessing abilities beyond ordinary people. But the moment he truly gained them, he found himself burdened with a heavy mission.

The year he crossed over to the monster world, he was 18 years old.

At that time, the monster world was in violent turmoil. Monster King Di Zhao had self-decomposed, leaving various factions without a leader, plunging the world into a chaotic period of warlords.

The war had been ongoing for thousands of years before his arrival. All the factions that had once sworn allegiance to Di Zhao wanted to become the new rulers of the world.

Among them, four factions were the most powerful.

They were Yan Ming, who wielded the power of space; Nine Yin, who wielded the power of purification; Guider, who wielded the power of analysis; and Hyperdimension, who wielded the power of extraction of all things.

They were once Di Zhao's most loyal servants. After Di Zhao's decomposition, they all believed themselves to be Di Zhao's best successors, wanting to inherit the "Power of Solidifying My Origin" that Di Zhao had buried in Emperor's Tomb Village after his self-decomposition, and become the new Di Zhao.

But the arrival of the terrifying Black Tide changed the previously stalemated conflict.

The monster world was gradually corrupted by the Black Tide's power, its environment and ecology were destroyed, and Spatial Rifts appeared in many places.

If this trend continued, the monster world would eventually be swallowed by the Black Tide.

The four loyal servants finally chose to join forces to fight against the Black Tide, battling against the endless Evil Spirits.

The long war gradually weakened the four loyal servants, but the power of the Evil Spirits grew stronger with the Black Tide's infiltration of the world. Defeat was irreversible.

Eventually, the four loyal servants were forced to retreat to the edge of the monster world by the Evil Spirits, which was Emperor's Tomb Village, where Di Zhao had left his origin. They cooperatively opened a forbidden seal and hid within.

Emperor's Tomb Village was also the last piece of pure land in the monster world that had not fallen.

The four loyal servants originally intended to try to fuse Di Zhao's solidified origin and inherit Di Zhao's power, to fight the Black Tide again with Di Zhao's Power.

But at the critical moment, the terrifying Black Tide struck again, engulfing Emperor's Tomb Village.

It was at this point that he crossed over to the monster world, was sucked into the terrifying Black Tide vortex, and was on the verge of death at any moment.

In a moment of crisis, it was the four loyal servants who joined forces to repel the Black Tide and, in the process, saved him back to Emperor's Tomb Village.

This action also further weakened the already frail four loyal servants, and their bodies suffered varying degrees of problems during their confrontation with the Black Tide.

Guider also lost its life form at that time and became a ball of water.

What the four loyal servants did not expect was that none of them could inherit the wisp of solidified origin left by Di Zhao, but rather he, a mortal who had crossed over, inherited the honor they had pursued their entire lives.

Qi Sheng clearly remembered the complex expressions in the eyes of the four loyal servants at the moment he inherited Di Zhao's Power.

Anger, confusion, despair, unwillingness, excitement... a mixture of complex emotions, but in the end, it all turned into calm acceptance.

Four figures knelt before him, pledging their loyalty to him, and serving him as servants for eternity.

He also bore the obsessions of the four loyal servants, promising to use Di Zhao's might to save the monster world and dispel the endless, terrifying Black Tide.

In the years that followed, he first fused with Di Zhao's solidified origin and slept for 300 years.

He then spent a hundred years of cognitive learning under the guidance of the four loyal servants, who taught him to understand Di Zhao's various abilities and to comprehend the matters of the monster world.

But to become the true god of Di Zhao, he still needed to leave Emperor's Tomb Village, explore the monster world, and contain the Primal Power that Di Zhao had lost.

However, this process was incredibly difficult. Besides possessing Di Zhao's solidified origin, he had no other power enhancements. Di Zhao's body could not be strengthened through any cultivation method; only by containing could he gain power.

His strength at that time was only slightly stronger than the weakest creatures in the monster world. Coupled with the rampant Evil Spirits outside, his growth was arduous.

Di Zhao's solidified origin had a great attraction to the Evil Spirits. The four loyal servants believed that being discovered by high-level Evil Spirits would inevitably lead to disaster, so he had to continuously consume Sacrificial Power each time he went out to conceal Di Zhao's aura.

Every outing was a considerable expenditure of Sacrificial Power.

During this period, he contained the Eagle Head Demon, the Stone Gargoyle, and the Black Armor Snake, gradually increasing his strength.

But this speed was still too slow in the eyes of the four loyal servants. The Sacrificial Power spent on each outing far exceeded the gains from hunting and containment. They had already injected their remaining divine power into Emperor's Tomb Village to prevent it from being destroyed by the Black Tide, and could not provide him with any combat assistance.

At this rate, before he could become strong enough, Emperor's Tomb Village would fall due to the depletion of Sacrificial Power.

Just as the four devoted servants despaired for the future, Qi Sheng proposed a concept.

This plan was the prototype of the Challenger Plan, the player recruitment plan.

The four devoted servants each mastered different rule-based powers.

He had Guider, who wielded the power of information, create the Data System within the Challenger Plan, allowing challengers to read the data of things they saw in the monster world.

He had Yan Ming, who wielded the power of space, create the Reception System, which could use this system to guide challengers from different worlds into the monster world, and also send back their consciousness when they chose to withdraw.

He had Nine Yin, who wielded the power of purification, create the Purification System, which could cleanse the mental trauma or other negative states challengers suffered in the monster world.

He had Hyperdimension, who wielded the power of extracting all things, create the Growth System, which could help players refine the life force of fallen monsters, integrating it into the players' bodies to become part of their strength.

These four systems, combined with Emperor's Tomb Village's territory trait "Life Reshaping," made the player recruitment plan feasible.

To achieve this goal, the four devoted servants spent 50 years continuously refining and modifying, finally completing the Challenger System.

At that time, Emperor's Tomb Village's Sacrificial Power Pool had only a little over 10 million Sacrificial Power remaining, enough to sustain Emperor's Tomb Village for at most another ten years. The maintenance cost was also increasing with the rising intensity of the Black Tide, growing from the initial 500 Sacrificial Power per day to 1000 Sacrificial Power per day.

The four devoted servants handed the choice over to him, and he made his decision.

He would gamble their remaining Sacrificial Power on a future, having Yan Ming burn Sacrificial Power and use spatial power to search other Plane Worlds for lives that could be recruited as challengers.

During the years of cross-spatial searching, Qi Sheng's consciousness remained by Yan Ming's side.

During this time, he witnessed countless Plane Worlds corrupted and devoured by the terrifying Black Tide, where all life withered, leaving only countless Evil Spirits rampant across the land.

Just as the Sacrificial Power was about to run out, Qi Sheng saw a familiar place.

It was a blue planet.

As the image of the planet zoomed in, though it had changed greatly compared to his memory, he was still certain.

This was his former homeland.

At that moment, Qi Sheng smiled happily.

He knew he had succeeded, and the Challenger Plan had finally found its purpose.

National Day holiday has ended~

(End of this chapter)