A wage worker. What a curious term.
In a place like the Main God Space, where everyone acted for themselves and looked out for number one, there might be room for teammates, but never for wage workers and the employers who hired them.
Yet the Third Great Purge had caused more than the deaths of countless Reincarnators. It had also imposed numerous restrictions and greatly increased the difficulty of story bosses.
As bosses grew stronger and harder to defeat, more Reincarnators had to join the battles. The extreme difficulty of forming a team for a mission went without saying, and the limit of ten members per team left many large-scale boss fights severely short-handed. Under these circumstances, wage workers came into being.
Wage workers were generally elite solo Reincarnators. They were formidable, but without a team to support them, they couldn't grind certain key bosses.
Teams would then act as employers, recruiting them to contribute to boss fights. After the boss went down, they would distribute some of the spoils, and everyone would be happy.
Of course, that was how it looked on the surface. In reality, most wage workers were exploited. The teams got to eat their fill, while the workers were lucky if they got a little soup.
It couldn't be helped. If everyone had Su Moyan's strength and tact, they wouldn't have to toil away as wage workers. For this battle against the Evil Sword Immortal, the four elite teams had recruited more than fifty wage workers through various channels to fight alongside them.
But a plan proposed by Yao Xue, the captain of the Flying Snow Team, dealt a devastating blow to the wage workers, who had been itching for a fight and determined to take down the boss.
To deal with Evil Spirit Covering Heaven safely, the peerlessly beautiful woman suggested turning all the wage workers into mindless idiots, then using puppet control to send them forward and tank the skill!
It was an audacious move they wouldn't have dared to imagine before: more than fifty Reincarnators, all elite soloists from the East Asia Region, would give their lives to absorb a single boss skill!
When the plan was proposed, Lan Tianhong and Su Moyan were the first to object. But Tu Qianli challenged them: if they didn't sacrifice the wage workers, how many more team members would each squad lose? Anyone struck by Evil Spirit Covering Heaven couldn't return to the Main God Space. In other words, they could really die here.
In the end, the few were no match for the many. Caught off guard, the four elite teams and their five powerhouses ambushed the vigilant wage workers. After eliminating a few who resisted, they finally formed suicide squads of ten per team, sending them forward in five waves!
The Evil Sword Immortal's final form had turned his whole body bloodred. Even his eyes glimmered with a trace of blood-red light that sent shivers down one's spine. Compared with his previous two states, his mind was clearly growing muddled. That was his only weakness; otherwise, the Reincarnators wouldn't have dared use such a plan against him.
The ten wage workers charged forward like puppets on strings. Evil Spirit Covering Heaven was certainly fearsome, but it was useless against idiots with no thoughts in their heads.
When the skill failed, the furious Evil Sword Immortal unleashed his sword. The ten dazed wage workers didn't even try to dodge, and instantly became a cloud of blood mist. Lan Tianhong and Su Moyan watched from afar, their eyes filled with pity, but it was soon replaced by resolve. Now that things had come this far, defeating the Evil Sword Immortal and entering the fourth difficulty was the most urgent task. It was the only way to partly make up for the consequences of what they had done.
Otherwise, once word of this got out, the four elite teams and their five powerhouses would become sinners in the East Asia Region, pariahs whom everyone denounced. No one would dare work with them again.
This plan was not only vicious toward the wage workers. Was it not also a way of forcing everyone else present into a desperate fight? Who would have thought that Yao Xue, usually known as the Lingbo Fairy, could have such a snake-hearted streak? A wave of wary, contemptuous looks swept toward the Flying Snow Team's captain, but she remained calm and watched it all unfold without changing expression.
Whatever they thought, the battle had to continue. With Wedding Dress Divine Skill protecting him, Lan Tianhong took the role of main tank and endured the Evil Sword Immortal's Evil Sword Slash. A Ghost Soul Corpse Demon summoned by the Dead Soul Team served as the off-tank, and the battle gradually began to turn in their favor.
100%--80%--60%--40%--22%!
After four uses of Evil Spirit Covering Heaven, the ground around the Evil Sword Immortal was littered with corpses and ran with blood. The scene filled them with a visceral sense of cruelty and sorrow. Aside from the final wave of wage workers, fewer than twenty Reincarnators remained. Almost all were drenched in sweat and seriously wounded, yet their faces shone with excitement and anticipation.
This was the closest they had ever come to success since they began tackling the boss. The only challenge left was the Evil Sword Immortal's berserk state, which would begin once his health fell below 20%. If they could focus their attacks and take him down quickly, the natural barrier looming before all the Reincarnators in the East Asia Region would finally be broken!
But just then, the unexpected happened!
Among the ten wage workers in the final wave tasked with withstanding Evil Spirit Covering Heaven, a man with tiger-bright eyes, sword-shaped brows, and a strikingly heroic air suddenly drew his sword. A swift, graceful flash of sword light streaked past, and one of the Dead Soul Team members spat blood and roared, "How dare you sever my mind-control thread! Do you have a death wish?"
As if! You were about to control him and send him to his death. Were you really going to forbid him from fighting back with his life on the line?
Su Moyan and the others frowned at the shameless words. But the most pressing issue was that the wage worker had broken free of their control. The Reincarnators present hurriedly stopped attacking the Evil Sword Immortal, keeping his health at the perilous threshold of 21%, and all turned to look at the wage worker who had started the commotion.
"Gao Xu? It's him!"
"Hmph. The golden wage worker, huh? He's got some tricks, all right. He's a patient one, too, to have waited until now to make his move. This is going to be hard to settle!"
"I remember Yao Xue recruited him. Heh, this should be interesting. Let's see how that woman handles it."
The Reincarnators murmured among themselves. Yao Xue furrowed her delicate brows and started forward, but Lin Feng stopped her.
Everyone knew that Lin Feng, the Dead Soul Team's captain, had long coveted Yao Xue and pursued her more than once. No doubt he was stepping in for her beloved again.
"Gao Xu, what are you doing? Don't you have any sense of the bigger picture? The East Asia Region has thrown everything it has into killing this boss, and you're still going to hold us back? Do you want to become a sinner in the eyes of the entire region?" When Lin Feng spoke, his tone was much like that of his teammate, though far more polished. He piled on one accusation after another. If everyone present didn't know the full story, his righteous air might have fooled them. He was remarkably skilled at twisting the truth.
But Gao Xu's face remained calm, neither sorrowful nor joyful. He ignored Lin Feng and looked toward a spot not far behind him, then smiled. "Brother Shadow Assassin, why don't we find out which of us can act faster: you restraining me, or me sending these doomed companions of mine on their way?"
At his words, many eyes flickered. Where Gao Xu was looking, a figure that seemed both real and illusory emerged. He spread his hands and slowly stepped back, signaling that he meant no harm.
Shadow Assassin was one of the Flying Snow Team's trump-card assassins. He moved silently, like a ghost. No one knew how Gao Xu had detected him.
"Heh... Hahahahahaha!" Seeing how a few words had forced Shadow Assassin back, Gao Xu suddenly threw his head back and laughed. The anguish and grief in his laughter moved everyone present. "So you really are a bunch of spineless cowards. The moment the puppets who are supposed to die for you are about to meet their end ahead of schedule, you're scared?"
"Gao Xu, don't get cocky. I'm telling you—" Lin Feng had first been ignored, then mocked. Unable to bear it, he flew into a rage and began to threaten Gao Xu, but Yao Xue stopped him.
As the Main God Space's universally recognized beauty stepped forward, the scene fell silent. Her gentle, soothing voice seemed capable of calming any furious heart. "Brother Gao, you've been a wage worker for a long time. You've helped us immensely in the past. If we hadn't been forced into it, we wouldn't have resorted to this. Since you managed to break the talisman's power and regain your senses, that's a good thing. I swear I won't bring up what happened before. Come over and fight the boss with us..."
"Helped us immensely... helped us immensely..." Gao Xu murmured the words several times, his expression calming, though his voice grew ever more subdued. "Yao Xue, how can you even say that? It's been two years. We've known each other for two whole years. How much have I done for you? I know... I know you've always been polite to me on the surface, but deep down you've looked down on me. You think I'm nothing but a lowly wage worker, laboring away to kill bosses for your team. When you're pleased, you toss me a few scraps, and I gobble them up like they're delicious. Heh..."
Gao Xu shook his head and looked toward the corpses scattered beside the Evil Sword Immortal. His eyes still held a trace of disbelief. "For wage workers like us, this boss battle is a near-certain death. Who doesn't know how dangerous it is? So why did so many people come? Do you think they all came out of respect for your four elite teams? Or because they expected a share of the purple gear dropped by the Evil Sword Immortal? What a joke! You shouted your slogans loud and clear, but ask yourself: how much of it did you truly mean? We came here because we genuinely wanted the East Asia Region to break through the third-difficulty barrier, for the honor of the entire region! So we wouldn't be bullied and mocked by those foreigners! And what did we get... cannon fodder! Cannon fodder turned into idiots! Yao Xue, you defy the natural order and outrage everyone. You'll never die a good death!!!"
After Gao Xu's anguished speech, everyone present was moved. Even Tu Qianli, who had killed countless people, was silent.
Yao Xue's pretty face flushed slightly, as if she felt ashamed. But the flash of fury and cruelty in her snow-and-mist eyes vanished in an instant. It might have fooled everyone else, but not Gao Xu, not now.
Gao Xu's strength was extraordinary. He was hailed as the greatest solo Reincarnator after Su Moyan, and that reputation was well earned. If not for a calamity in his past, he would certainly have been a member of one of the four elite teams by now, and this dispute would never have happened.
Yao Xue had always presented herself as kind. Her inner pride and contempt showed only now and then, and she hid them well. But Gao Xu's blunt curse was too much for her to bear, and she finally revealed a glimpse of her true face. In a soft voice, she threatened him, "What do you want, then? Do you want me to capture your soul and hand it over to those evil sect characters in the story so they can refine it into a magic treasure, leaving you unable to enter the cycle of rebirth for all eternity?"
"What do I want? It's simple..." Gao Xu raised his brows. For an instant, his expression was indescribably vicious, full of hatred for heaven and earth. "I want you not only to fail, but to all die with us!!!"
Yao Xue pressed her lips together and smiled with contempt. If Gao Xu used ruthless measures to kill the final wave of wage workers early, perhaps the Evil Sword Immortal's final Evil Spirit Covering Heaven would go unblocked and the boss battle would end in failure. That was possible. But his talk of making them all die with him was a complete joke.
Any one of the Reincarnators present could beat Gao Xu in a fight. They were only wary of him ruining the battle. As for taking them all down with him, did he really have what it took?
Whether he did or not, Gao Xu soon proved it with his actions.
"Summon the Nine Abyss Nether Infant, reverse the movement of the two forces, summon the vengeful gods of the four directions, scatter the seven souls and eight fiends..."
Gao Xu pointed his sword at the sky and let out a long howl. In an instant, dark clouds covered the sky above Shushan, hanging so low and heavy they seemed ready to crush the ground.
"The Eight Forbidden Laws of Heaven-Extinction? Hmph. Trying to use sorcery in front of me is like showing off before an expert!" Yao Xue sneered inwardly. Far from being alarmed, she was delighted. "I'm not afraid of you taking us down with you. I'm afraid you'll waste our time... Shadow Assassin, what are you waiting for?"
Shadow Assassin, who had been holding back for a while, rushed toward Gao Xu. But instead of attacking him, he flung out both hands and shot several threads that wrapped around the other nine wage workers. With a yank and a swing, he sent them into the hands of the other Reincarnators waiting to catch them. They were then pushed toward the Evil Sword Immortal.
Lan Tianhong understood at once. One strike of Wedding Dress—Blood Slaughter brought the Evil Sword Immortal's health down to 20%, while the Blood Slaughter Team's weakest fighter stepped into the spot Gao Xu had left vacant. They had finally made it through the last Evil Spirit Covering Heaven!
The Reincarnators from all four teams breathed a collective sigh of relief. When they looked at Gao Xu, who seemed not to have noticed anything, their eyes brimmed with undisguised killing intent!
After things had reached this point, it didn't matter who had been in the wrong at the start. As members of the four elite teams, they couldn't let Gao Xu live. In the Space, the strong had the power of life and death over the weak. It was simply that cruel and unreasonable!
In fact, they didn't need to act. Gao Xu had forced the Heaven-Extinction technique, and there was no way he could survive. One look at Yao Xue's expression made that clear. She was now entirely focused on defending herself. She expected Gao Xu's desperate attack to take both their lives to have a ninety percent chance of targeting her.
With her array of defensive items, Yao Xue had nothing to fear. At worst, she could use that extraordinarily precious Yujia Boundary Sealing Talisman to save her life. Once Gao Xu destroyed himself, she could kill the Evil Sword Immortal and still be the East Asia Region's greatest contributor!
"Reflect the twin brilliance of sun and moon, dance the thousand measures of deadly fiendish force, offer my soul as a pact, share this spirit with gods and demons..."
As the chant ended, the sword raised high in the air suddenly unleashed an overwhelming sword aura. The dark clouds gathered in the sky were torn apart, and the sword aura shot through nine layers of heaven. The technique Absolute Heaven Nether Fiend had driven the sword aura to such astonishing power!
Gao Xu couldn't fully control the forbidden technique. Before the move was fully charged, the backlash began. His eyes turned an eerie pale blue, and murderous intent poured from them.
"Absolute Heaven! Nether Fiend! Sword!"
The instant he unleashed the move, the space around him seemed to collapse. Countless wild flames of demonic fury spread from the void, layering over one another like rays of light before gathering on the sword in Gao Xu's hand. He himself was shrouded in a mass of deathly black energy.
As the sword, filled with demonic intent, took shape, all the Reincarnators braced themselves. They feared Gao Xu might target them, and the sweat dripping from their palms soaked their various return items.
But Gao Xu once again defied everyone's expectations. He didn't aim his sword of chilling demonic intent at Yao Xue, or at any of the Reincarnators before him. Instead, he turned it downward and slashed at the ground of Shushan!
BOOM!
Sword marks spread in every direction, splitting the ground from its very foundations. The battlefield against the Evil Sword Immortal was the Sword Qi Platform, on the western mountainside of Shushan, built to let the sect's disciples practice their sword-riding techniques.
Now this vast Sword Qi Platform was torn apart by the dark sword aura and reduced to rubble and dust. The force continued unabated. Wave after wave of explosive shockwaves surged like the tide, carrying an aura of death as they crashed toward Shushan.
"Something's wrong! He's trying to trigger the Three Sovereigns Artifacts barrier around Shushan..." As Gao Xu attacked Shushan like a madman, Yao Xue was taken aback. A flash of inspiration crossed her mind, and her lovely face changed for the first time as she shouted.
But before she could finish, three boundless auras surged up from the Three Sovereigns Platform on Shushan. The Fuxi Sword, Nuwa Stone, and Shennong Cauldron—three artifacts left behind by the ancient Three Sovereigns—were among the sources of Shushan's spiritual power and its last line of defense.
Because the artifacts were tied to Shushan's very foundations, the Five Elders of Shushan had never dared to use them recklessly, even though the Evil Sword Immortal posed such a great threat. However vicious the Evil Sword Immortal might be, he had never intended to destroy Shushan completely.
But if they let Gao Xu continue to unleash the Heaven- and Earth-Destroying forbidden technique, Shushan would suffer grievous damage. The Three Sovereigns Artifacts were finally roused, and a protective barrier rose over the mountain, easily stopping the sword aura's impact.
In theory, the people who should have been panicking were the members of Shushan Sect. Yet once the Reincarnators understood what had happened, their faces showed even greater alarm than those of the Shushan disciples.
The Three Sovereigns Artifacts barrier was incredibly stable—so stable that none of their various items for teleporting through space could be used to escape.
In other words, Gao Xu's move had cut off the Reincarnators' escape route. Now they were truly in danger of dying here!
"Gao Xu, well done. Don't think that using a forbidden technique will save you from having your soul torn out. Come here and die!" Yao Xue was almost gnashing her teeth. She stared at Gao Xu, whose body was more than half gone, and began forming hand seals and chanting. Clearly, she intended to make good on her earlier threat and ensure that he would wish he were dead.
"Can't take it already?" Gao Xu looked at her with interest. His face shone with the satisfaction and exhilaration of a long-awaited revenge. "The real show is just getting started! Blood Fiend Ghost Vessel, appear!"
A blood-red vessel floated out of Gao Xu's storage space. Before Yao Xue's disbelieving eyes, it shot toward the rampaging Evil Sword Immortal with a speed too fast to follow.
A flash of bloodlight flared, then contracted. The whole world suddenly fell silent. Only Gao Xu's final mad laughter remained:
"Nether Emperor Danyin's greatest creation, merge with the world's most evil Evil Sword Immortal! Unleash your mightiest radiance, then... destroy everything before you! Hahahahahahaha!"
"Impossible! That's the Blood Fiend Ghost Vessel, the item with the lowest drop rate from Nether Emperor Danyin! How could Gao Xu have it? How could he possibly have it?!" Lin Feng covered his mouth, as if he had realized something. A look of wild terror suddenly spread across his face. He turned and ran straight for the edge of the Sword Qi Platform.
He wasn't the only one. Every Reincarnator who knew what the Blood Fiend Ghost Vessel was turned deathly pale. They dropped everything and did the only thing they could: turn and run!
Run! Run! Run!
At that moment, they would have given anything for their parents to have given them two more legs!
"Run... With the Three Sovereigns barrier in place, where can you go?" Yao Xue alone kept her eyes fixed on Gao Xu. Despair and unwillingness filled them, while her beautiful face twisted with rage. "Blood Fiend Ghost Vessel... very good. Very good indeed! Before this, if someone had told me that every top expert in the East Asia Region would fall to the hands of a single wage worker, I never would have believed it! Gao Xu, you hid your strength too well. You'll never die a good death!!!"
The Blood Fiend Ghost Vessel was a demonic object from the world of Fantasy Chronicle of the Ghost City. Nether Emperor Danyin had created it by using the souls of sixty-four miscarried fetuses and refining them with the Nine Resentments Transformation Technique. Its power surpassed even the forbidden technique Gao Xu had just unleashed. With this object's help, the Evil Sword Immortal, the embodiment of evil thoughts, underwent a transformation so drastic that all his wounds were healed and his strength surged. Before long, he had become a genuine fourth-difficulty boss!
Lan Tianhong, captain of the Ghost Savage Team, had firmly held his ground against the Evil Sword Immortal until then. A casual sweep of the Evil Sword Immortal's sword reduced him to dust. The sword had now grown several zhang long. It needed no technique, merely radiating a pure, world-destroying evil intent to become truly...
Unstoppable!
Yao Xue raised the Yujia Boundary Sealing Talisman and barely held back the Evil Sword's attack, but her rapidly dwindling magic power could not sustain it for long.
Yao Xue's heart was shrouded in darkness. Her dazed gaze swept around and found Gao Xu, still staring straight at her despite having only half his head left, as if he wanted to witness her death with his own eyes before he was willing to die.
"You've destroyed everything I had. How could I let you die in peace?!" Knowing there was no hope of survival, Yao Xue summoned her last strength. While she still had some magic power left, she voluntarily withdrew the Yujia Boundary Sealing Talisman, raised her delicate hand, and sent a spell at Gao Xu. His head shattered. His soul drifted away and would soon disperse under the forbidden technique's backlash, never to enter the cycle of rebirth.
What a pity. This will leave those arrogant foreigners in the Europe-America Region to benefit... Yao Xue didn't know Gao Xu had already lost consciousness. Her final thought was truly for the sake of the East Asia Region!
Once the confident Reincarnators had all fallen beneath the Evil Sword, the Evil Sword Immortal's aura finally began to weaken, and he returned to being a third-difficulty boss. After all, the Blood Fiend Ghost Vessel was only a one-use item. It couldn't provide the Evil Sword Immortal with energy forever.
The protagonist Jingtian and his companions arrived late and encountered the Evil Sword Immortal, who seemed as if nothing had happened. Everything returned to the game's original storyline.
Only after the great battle, high above Shushan, did a calm voice, tinged with a hint of surprise, drift through the air:
"Hm? Why has the Six Paths of Reincarnation opened? Could Demon Lord Chonglou be plotting something again? Hurry back and report this to the Heavenly Emperor!"
Before you continue