After the fishtailed girl led her formidable entourage into Dark Cloud Palace, Chen Daolin, hidden among the crowd, finally wiped at the nonexistent cold sweat on his brow.
"Good thing that woman didn't notice me. Otherwise, the consequences would've been unimaginable."
Seeing that this fishtailed girl, whom he had encountered once in the Endless Abyssal Sea, was personally escorted to Dark Cloud Palace in Dead Fire Divine City by an Eternal God, he knew that her claim—that she was a descendant of the bloodline of the Rest Island Lord, one of the Thirteen Islands—was probably true.
A wave of relief rose in his heart.
"Good thing I didn't go to Rest Island with her back then. Who knows what would've happened to me otherwise?"
Thinking of how he had "looted" the fishtailed girl, Chen Daolin could not help feeling a little guilty.
He clearly remembered the fury blazing in that fishtailed girl's eyes at the time.
Hmm...
"Until the day of the Dead Fire Divine City auction, I'd better avoid going out..."
After that minor incident, Chen Daolin parted ways with the demigods of the adventurer team and settled down in Dark Cloud Palace. He stayed hidden in his residence every day and went nowhere. Even when the others from the adventurer team occasionally invited him out, he found excuses to turn them down. Thus, he quietly waited for the arrival of the Dead Fire Divine City auction.
The days passed one by one.
About nine months after Chen Daolin arrived in Dead Fire Divine City—
A vast bell toll rang out across the entire Dead Fire Divine City, followed by a wave of commotion throughout the city.
Within the cloud sea overhead, thick with dark clouds, an island radiating streams of golden light appeared.
As though summoned, figures emitting