Everything proceeded along the most perfect course in Arthur's will.
His legions had "conquered" the lords of the Fourth Abyss. Those unruly ghost lords and those cunning, treacherous demon lords had their armies' morale destroyed and their will to fight shattered. The Fourth Abyss was now like a maiden stripped of every stitch, lying obediently before Arthur and "Ais Te," allowing them to take whatever they wished.
The abyssal lords threw open their territories, allowing the tens of thousands of exploration teams dispatched by Arthur to come and go as they pleased. These lords even mobilized their elite warriors to protect the scouts as they explored the wilderness, terrified that they might be killed or injured by Magic Beasts and venomous insects in the wild.
As for the captured slave soldiers, after the lords paid an enormous ransom—so vast that Arthur would wake up laughing whenever he thought of it in the middle of the night—Arthur magnanimously released the vast majority of them. He retained some young and strong slave soldiers, however. Whether used as cannon fodder in sieges or as forced labor, they were excellent choices. Arthur certainly would not let them all go.
The important figures of the Temple of Punishment also, in a rare gesture, showed the lords a trace of goodwill. For clergy of the Temple of Punishment to show goodwill toward these heretics was truly unprecedented!
But when the lords piled mountains of magical metal ores, magical crystals, gemstones, and all manner of rare abyssal herbs before them, the firm faith in the hearts of those esteemed clergymen could not help but weaken. Faced with wealth of astronomical proportions, they closed their eyes and turned a blind eye to the demons and ghosts appearing before them from time to time.
Lin Qi mobilized his mercenaries