On the outskirts of a swamp, Jin An led the remaining members of his Seventh Squad, all of them intently watching a certain area ahead.
Beside them was Wu Sheng, dressed in green robes. He lay there with his hands behind his head, staring blankly up at the dim sky with blood-red eyes.
Man Gu was lying obediently beside him, resting with his eyes closed.
Wu Sheng had originally planned to leave without a word, even if he didn't kill Jin An and the others.
But the terms Jin An's group offered were simply too generous. They were paying far too much.
If an Elite Trial Taker joined Blood Sun City during the Trial Ground, they would immediately receive 100,000 Cosmic Crystals as a signing bonus.
During the trial, killing an Elite Trial Taker from another faction would earn a direct reward of one million Cosmic Crystals.
Killing a Special Elite would earn an incredible 100 million Cosmic Crystals.
And there was no upper limit!
That was just the direct reward inside the Trial Ground. Once they got out, Blood Sun City would issue further rewards and honors.
Clearly, Blood Sun City was laying its cards on the table: "We may not have any Special Elites here, but we've got money!"
If they could recruit enough Elite Trial Takers in one go, then even if the other side had Special Elites, they still wouldn't be able to do anything to them.
Even in Human Territory, the average net worth of a Cosmic Level powerhouse was only about ten million Cosmic Coins. Aside from a few Cosmic Level powerhouses with assets worth over 100 million Cosmic Coins, most couldn't possibly be that wealthy.
But now, killing an Elite Trial Taker earned a million Cosmic Crystals, and killing a Special Elite came with a reward of 100 million Cosmic Crystals. The benefits were enormous.
As it happened, Wu Sheng was desperately short of money, so the two sides had hit it off.
Of course, for Blood Sun City, the money was well spent.
After all, those Elite Trial Takers might eventually reach Nirvana Level. And the Special Elites with Domains were all but guaranteed to reach Nirvana Level; more than half had a chance of becoming Domain Lords, and many might even become Realm Lords in the future.
Spending a little money now to eliminate the elites their rival factions had worked so hard to cultivate was naturally a fantastic deal for Blood Sun City.
But what Wu Sheng hadn't expected in the least was that joining Blood Sun City required some kind of "token of allegiance."
In other words, Blood Sun City might be desperate for Elite Trial Takers to join, but unless you killed one or two Elite Trial Takers from a rival faction as a "greeting gift," they wouldn't trust you.
That was how this plan had come about. Wu Sheng had proposed using the savage beasts in the Trial Ground to pull off something big against Blood Sun City's strongest enemy, Thunder Star Mountain.
As for Man Gu, Bai Yu, and the others, Blood Sun City would give each of them 10,000 Cosmic Crystals as compensation for joining. It was another attempt to win them over with money and keep them from joining another faction.
Although there were three or four hundred Elite Trial Takers in this CKHX-3819 Trial Ground, making it hard for Prison Clan Members like them—who weren't even elites—to survive, even if they switched to a faction with Special Elites, those people might not want them.
Besides, Blood Sun City was offering so much that these people might be able to take their Cosmic Crystals, train hard for a few years, and see one of them break through to Star Grade.
Then their lives would be entirely different. That was why they had chosen to keep following Jin An.
But Wu Sheng had now completely opened up his thinking.
The Blood Trial was certainly perilous, but it was full of "easy targets." Blood Sun City was willing to spend big to recruit lone Elite Trial Takers like them. What about the other factions?
If he played his cards right, his Time-Space Shop might finally gather enough Cosmic Crystals to activate.
Before, he'd been exploring on his own, and the Cosmic Crystals he'd managed to gather were pitifully few. Now a huge opportunity was right in front of him. It all came down to whether he could seize it.
At that thought, Wu Sheng narrowed his red eyes. His crossed leg stopped swinging as he sank into deep contemplation.
Above the swamp, Bai Yu beat his wings with all his might, streaking toward them like a flash of white light. In his talons, he carried a newborn White Wolf Cub, about half a meter long.
The cub was clearly restless. It kept squirming in Bai Yu's grasp and let out miserable cries of "yip, yip."
"Master, I've completed the task. I waited two days, but I finally caught the Wolf King's cub."
Bai Yu set the cub down and spoke with unmistakable obsequiousness.
"Good. Nice work. Here are the 20 sets of battle armor I promised you. Once we've pulled this off, I'll give you the remaining 30 sets!"
Wu Sheng stood up at once, praised Bai Yu with satisfaction, and tossed him a Space Ring.
Bai Yu wasn't very strong, but he made stealing and sneaking around look easy. On top of that, he could fly, which made him very useful in this Trial Ground.
"Brother Wu Sheng, are you sure this plan will work?"
Jin An was still uneasy. His original mission had been to investigate the enemy situation at a gathering point of Trial Takers belonging to Thunder Star Mountain. Running into Wu Sheng, a lone Elite Trial Taker, had been an unexpected event.
Jin An had originally meant for Wu Sheng to kill a few non-elite Trial Takers from a rival faction and call that his "token of allegiance." But he'd never imagined Wu Sheng would come up with such a wild idea: wiping out every Trial Taker at that gathering point.
After all, Wu Sheng planned to use a White Moon Grey Wolf Pack led by a Sky Grade Leader. It had more than a thousand adult Earth Grade wolves, three Sky Grade First Order Wolf Commanders, and the strongest of them all, a Sky Grade Fourth Order Wolf King. Ordinary Trial Takers wouldn't dare provoke them.
And now Wu Sheng wanted to use them to attack Thunder Star Mountain's gathering point. It was too crazy.
"What are you afraid of? Stop being so timid. Once the trial period ends, it'll be too late to do anything. Besides, I wouldn't risk my life on something I wasn't sure about."
"For now, just rest up. When the time comes, don't let any stragglers get away. I don't want my money to just vanish into thin air."
A glint of bloodlust flickered in Wu Sheng's eyes. Every place had its own rules for survival. When you couldn't change them, it was better to try to fit in.
This was the path he'd chosen. Either he'd fight his way through the slaughter and become one of those who made it out of the Trial Ground alive,
or he'd be killed and become someone else's stepping stone.
Before, he hadn't understood the factions here and had been too cautious. But now that Jin An was helping him, everything would be much easier.
Money. It was all for the money!
The half-meter-long "little wolf cub" on the ground had only just been born, yet it already possessed Earth Grade strength—a sign of its enormous potential. As if it understood its situation, it stared at the green-robed youth in front of it. Rather than cowering, it bared its teeth at him, hoping to scare Wu Sheng away.
"Sorry about this. If you're lucky, this might even save your life!"
With that, Wu Sheng activated his Innate Secret Art, "Soul Control."
He had sent everyone else, including Bai Yu and Man Gu, several dozen miles away.
"Yip, yip!"
Under Wu Sheng's control, the White Wolf Cub let out one miserable howl after another, as if it had been badly startled.
It then began to trudge clumsily toward a certain direction outside the swamp, looking back every so often as it howled toward those behind it, as if trying to alert them to something.
"Awooo!"
A huge, majestic wolf howl suddenly rang out from somewhere in the swamp, as if the Wolf King had sensed the cub's predicament. Before long, massive white wolves, each at least two meters long, appeared and came charging toward the cub.
"Good. We've at least completed half of the first step. Now we'll have to see if these white wolves take the bait."
Hidden in the distance, Wu Sheng's heart stirred. The strongest one, the Wolf King, had already found the cub. But whether he could claim the "credit for the first kill" still depended on his acting skills!