On the Third Outer-Region Battlefield, at Barracks Base 001, a dark, shuttle-shaped spacecraft left the base without attracting anyone's attention.
The spacecraft was Kailun's—Shadow Sound. Its entire body was made of F-Grade Metal, making it completely immune to attacks below the level of an Immortal God. In the Dark Universe, it could reach a maximum speed of thirty times the speed of light.
Inside the ship, Qin Cang, Lan Ying, Lie Feng, and the others were raising their glasses together. Bottle after bottle of liquor they had brought from Barracks Base was being emptied. Qin Cang was delighted to be among these comrades. After all, he had always been fond of drinking. Over his ten thousand years of cultivation, aside from fighting, his greatest pleasures had been drinking and enjoying fine food.
The squad he had joined this time had a fellow drinker in Kailun. Under his influence, several of the other members had also come to love liquor, and they would have a few drinks whenever they had nothing else to do. It suited Qin Cang perfectly.
Back when he was cultivating in Chaos City, Qin Cang and Blood Blade King had hit it off right away. They would get together for a drink every few days, and the two of them had gone through quite a bit of the fine liquor Blood Blade King had collected over countless years.
Generally speaking, people who liked drinking also enjoyed collecting fine liquor. Blood Blade King had even set up a company and put his subordinates in charge of running it. Its main business was dealing in liquor, and he didn't care at all how much profit it made—as long as they could find all kinds of distinctive drinks from across the universe.
In the ship's lounge, Qin Cang was also inspecting Kailun's F-class spacecraft. Although it wasn't made entirely of F9-grade Metal, it was still an extraordinary vessel for an Immortal Military Lord.
Of course, the lounge was made of pure F9-grade Metal and could be detached on its own. This greatly increased the ship's defensive capabilities while also keeping costs under control. Even the lounge inside Qin Cang's Liuguang was made separately from G-grade Metal. The two of them had used the same design approach for their ships; only the materials differed.
Just from the value of the spacecraft, Qin Cang had gained a much clearer understanding of Kailun's strength.
After all, in the universe, the treasures one could possess had to match one's strength. If someone lacked the power to hold on to a powerful treasure, it would only attract the pursuit of stronger beings and bring needless disaster. That was why Demon Wing Venerable and Chaos City Lord had repeatedly warned Qin Cang not to reveal the Holy Sun Spear or the Huangyan Battle Armor unless absolutely necessary.
With Qin Cang's current strength, if he revealed those two treasures, it wouldn't simply be a matter of attracting a few Invincible Kings who wanted him dead. The powerful fighters across the entire Outer-Region Battlefield would search for information about him. Even if he left the Outer-Region Battlefield, the pursuit wouldn't end. He might even draw the attention of Invincible Kings within the Human Race. The Human Race's Venerables might hold back out of respect for Demon Wing Venerable, but Venerables from other races wouldn't have any such reservations. There was never any shortage of powerful beings willing to risk everything for a treasure.
When that happened, unless Qin Cang could hide until he was strong enough to protect the two treasures, he would never know a moment's peace.
After all, the Ancestral God Sect's supreme treasure was there, yet no one dared try to seize it. The Chaos City Lord's Thousand Treasure River and Demon Wing Venerable's palace were also there, yet no one dared fight over them. Strength was the foundation of everything.
Inside the ship, the squad members chatted and laughed.
"Cao Benqi, how much Military Merit do you have? Every new recruit who joins the Outer-Region Battlefield is assigned a Military Merit quota. You're absolutely not allowed to retire until you've met it. A person's quota also reflects their strength to a certain extent. Mine is 300 million Military Merit. What's yours?" Lie Feng asked. Clearly, he still wanted to get a sense of Qin Cang's strength indirectly. Since he couldn't spar with him, all he could do was ask about his Military Merit. After all, the Virtual Universe had set the quotas. Could anything judge a person's strength more accurately than the Virtual Universe?
"My quota is one billion Military Merit. It seems fine. I should be able to complete it," Qin Cang replied with a smile. There was no need to hide it, and this was only the amount of Military Merit he had on record.
"One billion? That much?
"Under normal circumstances, a World Lord's Military Merit quota ranges from one million to one billion. Even though every member of our squad is a World Lord General, the highest quota is only 300 million—mine and Lie Feng's. Kuin and Gu Shi each have quotas of 200 million. I've never heard of a World Lord with a quota of one billion, and you've only just arrived on the Outer-Region Battlefield as a new recruit!
"Just based on that one-billion quota, little Lie Feng, take it from your big sister and give up on thinking you can fight Cao Benqi. You absolutely can't beat him. If you try, you'll only make a fool of yourself." Lan Ying looked at Cao Benqi and spoke with a teasing smile.
Even Kailun was astonished to learn that Qin Cang's Military Merit quota was as high as one billion. After all, one billion was the highest quota a World Lord could receive. Didn't that mean the Virtual Universe had determined Qin Cang's strength to be at the very limit of the World Lord level?
Most ordinary World Lords, after all, had a quota of only one million Military Merit.
Likewise, killing an ordinary World Lord earned only 100,000 Military Merit.
Killing an Elite World Lord Warrior earned only one million Military Merit.
It was only for killing a World Lord General that the reward became substantial: a full ten million Military Merit.
Those rewards applied to kills made alone. If you joined forces with others, the Military Merit would be divided, and you would receive only a portion.
But don't think you could cheat the system. With the Virtual Universe monitoring everything, whatever happened on the Outer-Region Battlefield was uploaded for its assessment at all times. There was no chance of getting away with anything.
At the same time, Military Merit could be exchanged for all kinds of treasures. Many treasures that were incredibly rare in the Human Territory could be obtained directly through the Military Merit System on the Outer-Region Battlefield.
More importantly, these treasures were also available to Alien Races!
As long as you could kill enemies on the Outer-Region Battlefield and build up enough Military Merit, you could exchange it for anything from spacecraft and weapons to all kinds of rare secret techniques.
Even the Machine Race's Evolution Heart, a treasure the Machine Race strictly forbade from leaving its territory, could be exchanged for on the Outer-Region Battlefield. It came at an extremely high price, however, and was rarely available. Often, it wasn't for sale at all. Still, every so often, a few Evolution Hearts would indeed appear on the Military Merit exchange list.
This wasn't limited to the Human Race. All four major races did the same, putting some of their core resources into the Outer-Region Battlefield's Military Merit treasury for exchange. This was one of the reasons countless races joined the military systems of the four major factions and fought one another: they wanted to obtain inheritances and rare treasures their own races didn't have.
It was because of this large-scale warfare that the Outer-Region Battlefield had become the place where more Universe Venerables and Immortal Gods emerged than anywhere else in the universe. There was no comparison.
Whether they belonged to the four major races, their affiliated races, or the races of other factions in the universe, nearly every Venerable had joined one faction or another and fought on the Outer-Region Battlefield since it was first established.
It could be said that a Venerable who had never fought on the Outer-Region Battlefield had an incomplete cultivation career.
Of course, this applied only to ordinary lifeforms. Those heaven-defying Special Lifeforms were not allowed to enter the Outer-Region Battlefield. They were simply too unusual and powerful to be treated like ordinary Immortals.
Even a Special Lifeform with a Life Gene Level of only a few dozen times the human norm could overwhelm the battlefield with ease.
If one of these lifeforms was discovered on the Outer-Region Battlefield, the four major races would expel it—and might even kill it on the spot!
Under these rules, the strongest beings on the Outer-Region Battlefield could reach only the peak of the King level. Those whose strength reached Invincible King were not allowed to appear there, except during certain special battles.
Before you continue