Unexpected Gains

"Boom."

The palace collapsed.

The dark gold battle armor formed from the fifth-rank Force Battle Suit remained unstained by blood.

Beneath the mask, Li Dui's gaze was icy and indifferent.

The master of this city lay dead amidst the palace ruins.

Collecting the spoils, he soared into the clouds.

It had been over five and a half years since he arrived in the Xueluo World. Li Dui had long grown accustomed to this kind of hunting.

In truth, it was only in the first two years or so that Li Dui descended upon a main city every few days to fight and kill its lord.

During that period, he had slain nearly two hundred city lords, harvested over three hundred Xueluo Crystals, and countless other resources.

He also used the method of fusing Xueluo Crystals to temper his will.

Within just half a year, he could easily crush the berserk will within the second Xueluo Crystal.

Thus, he cheated and successfully fused the second one.

Then, spending an entire year and over a hundred forced fusion attempts, he barely managed to defeat the berserk will within the third Xueluo Crystal.

After that, no matter how he tried, the results were minimal. Li Dui didn't dwell on it. He simply cheated and fused the third one successfully.

In the three-plus years that followed, he only occasionally came out to hunt city lords. As for forcibly fusing Xueluo Crystals to temper his will, he reduced it to at most twice a month. No longer as frantic as before, doing it every two or three days.

He boarded the spaceship and ordered Xiao Le to fly in a random direction without any pattern.

Inside the World Ring he carried, the metal lifeform Xi was silently fusing with some rare material.

In the distance, Xiao Le controlled a Metal Robot, sorting through the spoils just acquired.

After querying the Virtual Universe system, items of some value were carefully collected by Xiao Le. Xiao Le estimated these were worth about 20 Hunyuan Units.

"Clank~ whoosh~"

Xiao Le's mechanical arm took out items one by one from a large crate. Finally, from the bottom of the crate, it pulled out a small metal box.

Opening the small box and seeing its contents, two beams of light swept up and down across Xiao Le's optical sensors several times.

"Reporting to master, unidentified item detected."

On the spaceship, Li Dui received Xiao Le's report.

With a thought, the metal box appeared before Li Dui.

The object inside the box was entirely earth-yellow, slightly larger than a basketball. Its shape somewhat resembled the heart of a mammal.

The aura it emitted felt familiar to Li Dui.

What was it? Li Dui stared at the ceiling of the cabin for a good while before remembering.

That aura was somewhat similar to the nutrient fluid in the Nutrient Pod.

In the Virtual Universe, Li Dui input various descriptive terms to query what this thing was.

He didn't use photos or holographic scan data to search. He didn't think much about why he avoided this obviously better method. Probably because of the sneakiness ingrained in his bones. No, let's call it caution.

What if it was something extraordinary that would draw the attention of higher-ups? Right? For the sake of the Hula Hoop, he couldn't risk even a one-in-ten-thousand chance.

After multiple supplements and exclusions, among the remaining results, one seemed correct.

This thing was called a "Shankang Fruit," condensed from a special environment. Its appearance was not fixed—sometimes fruit-shaped, sometimes heart-shaped, and sometimes resembling a lump of mud.

The Shankang Fruit had two major effects. First, it could accelerate the leap of life genes without any side effects.

Second, it could fully restore the divine body of an ordinary Marquis Rank Immortal.

The first effect wasn't much. It was just like a Nutrient Pod. Core members of the Five Great Powers all had free access to Nutrient Pods.

The second effect was more impressive. Of course, Li Dui's earlier worry was unnecessary. This thing wasn't enough to attract the attention of higher-ups.

Being able to fully restore the divine body of an ordinary Marquis Rank Immortal probably meant it could restore about 10% of a low-level King Rank Immortal's divine body.

As for its value, Li Dui didn't know. The Virtual Universe system didn't provide a valuation either. Guessing roughly, if a Marquis Rank Immortal wanted to buy this, they'd have to bleed heavily.

"Tsk tsk tsk, no windfall, no wealth," Li Dui sighed. Killing all those city lords before had only earned him 20 Hunyuan Units.

Now, his wealth had jumped to the level of millions of Hunyuan Units. And this thing was hard currency. If he wanted to sell it, he could just hand it directly to the Giant Axe Martial Arena.

He carefully stored the metal box containing the Shankang Fruit.

Though it was an unexpected windfall, Li Dui didn't actually value wealth that much. The most important thing now was improving his strength. If he really wanted money, he could go kill ten thousand city lords. Over ten thousand Xueluo Crystals, handed directly to the Giant Axe Martial Arena, would surely net him several million or even tens of millions of points.

Back in the day, Luo Feng had done just that. If Li Dui remembered correctly, Luo Feng had stored up about ten thousand Xueluo Crystals.

Of course, killing ten thousand city lords was easier said than done. Killing one every three days, nonstop, would take over eighty years.

Luo Feng had avatars—no comparison.

Li Dui was actually quite frugal. His comprehension of the laws improved too quickly. So he neither needed insight-type secret techniques to speed up law comprehension, nor did he need powerful and expensive attack-type secret techniques to expand his strength ceiling.

These two aspects cost way too many points. The secret technique Luo Feng bought, something called "Random Notes," cost a hundred billion points for the full version. Even sold in parts, it was astronomically expensive.

It was necessary to prepare enough points for Xi to upgrade to World Lord. That would cost around several hundred thousand. Immortal? That wasn't something to worry about now. Relying on killing city lords for Xueluo Crystals to exchange for points would mean slaughtering maybe ten to twenty million city lords. There were enough city lords, plenty of them. But the question was—did he want to spend two hundred thousand years here?

Next, he needed to prepare resources to bring his original body's father, mother, wife, and son up to Universe Rank—all fully stocked, the kind that wouldn't compromise their foundation.

Li Dui calculated it. At most, it would cost a thousand points. Simple.

The spaceship flew far away from the Xueluo World, accelerating to 0.7 times the speed of light in a safe zone before going silent. There was no choice—the dust, debris, and the mist formed by materialized source energy in this secret realm prevented the ship from reaching light speed. To perform a universe jump, they would have to go to a specially cleared area.

Above, in the Heavenly Eclipse Palace.

On one floor, there was a great hall. A massive screen inside constantly monitored the activity in the Xueluo World.

A dozen or so World Lords each kept watch over their assigned regions, occasionally chatting to pass the time.

One of them spotted Li Dui's ship and said, "This Li Dui really can't sit still. He keeps running out every now and then."

Another World Lord chimed in, "You call that restless? He's only come out once in a month. Have you forgotten those two years ago when he was coming and going every few days? I have no idea what he was up to."

"Say, you don't think he's hunting city lords like Lord Luo Feng did ten thousand years ago, do you?" another World Lord asked.

Ten thousand years ago, they had been the ones on monitoring duty here. For a while, Luo Feng's mechanical race ship had been entering and leaving the Xueluo World with extreme frequency. They had judged that he might be hunting city lords. There was no other explanation.

"Are you joking?"

"How could that be?"

"Stop pulling our legs."

Several people immediately objected.

"Back then, what level was Lord Luo Feng at? He had cleared the fifth floor of the Heavenly Bridge at minimum, with no upper limit in sight. This Li Dui? A mere third floor of the Heavenly Bridge. If he used some special method to kill an ordinary city lord, I'd believe it. But hunting them all over? That's just asking for death," someone laid out the facts and reasoning.

Everyone nodded in agreement with his analysis.

"Then what is he doing? It doesn't add up. Could he have found something special?" the one who had suspected Li Dui of imitating Luo Feng asked again.

"That's hard to say. Universe Rank training missions do hide quite a few hidden benefits. We just can't get our hands on them. Stay alert, everyone. Even though Li Dui is only a member of the fringe secret realm, as long as he can leave the Xueluo World, we can't let anything happen to him. Otherwise, we'll all be in deep trouble."